THE  HEIR 


THE   HEIR 

A  Love  Story 


By 
V.  SACKVILLE-WEST 

Author    of    "Heritage,"    "The 
Dragon  in  Shallow  Waters,"  etc. 


NEW  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 

1922 


Printed  in  Great  Britain 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

THE  HEIR , 1 

THE  CHRISTMAS  PARTY           ..(     ..  121 

PATIENCE 179 

HER  SON        196 

THE  PARROT  243 


983615 


THE  HEIR:   A  LOVE  STORY 
To  B.  M. 


Miss  CHASE  lay  on  her  immense  red  silk 
four-poster  that  reached  as  high  as  the  ceiling. 
Her  face  was  covered  over  by  a  sheet,  but 
as  she  had  a  high,  aristocratic  nose,  it  raised 
the  sheet  into  a  ridge,  ending  in  a  point.  Her 
hands  could  also  be  distinguished  beneath  the 
sheet,  folded  across  her  chest  like  the  hands 
of  an  effigy  ;  and  her  feet,  tight  together  like 
the  feet  of  an  effigy,  raised  the  sheet  into  two 
further  points  at  the  bottom  of  the  bed.  She 
was  eighty-four  years  old,  and  she  had  been 
dead  for  twenty-four  hours. 

The  room  was  darkened  into  a  shadowy 
twilight.  Outside,  in  a  pale,  golden  sunshine, 
the  birds  twittered  among  the  very  young 
green  of  the  trees.  A  thread  of  this  sunshine, 
alive  with  golden  dust-motes,/  sundered  the 
curtain  and  struck  out,  horizoritalJy.-'acrosr, 
the  boards  of  the  floor.  One  of 'the  two  men 
who  were  moving  with  all  possible  discretion 
about  the  room,  paused  to  draw  the  curtains 
more  completely  together. 

3 


4  THE  HEIR 

"  Very  annoying,  this  delay  about  the 
coffin,"  said  Mr.  Nutley.  "  However,  I  got 
off  the  telegrams  to  the  papers  in  time,  I 
hope,  to  get  the  funeral  arrangements  altered. 
It  would  be  very  awkward  if  people  from 
London  turned  up  for  the  funeral  on  Thurs- 
day instead  of  Friday — very  awkward  indeed. 
Of  course,  the  local  people  wouldn't  turn  up  ; 
they  would  know  the  affair  had  had  to  be  put 
off ;  but  London  people — they're  so  scat- 
tered. And  they  would  be  annoyed  to  find 
they  had  given  up  a  whole  day  to  a  country 
funeral  that  wasn't  to  take  place  after  all." 

"I  should  think  so,  indeed,"  said  Mr.  Chase, 
peevishly.  "  I  know  the  value  of  time  well 
enough  to  appreciate  that." 

"  Ah  yes,"  Mr.  Nutley  replied  with  sym- 
pathy, "you're  anxious  to  be  back  at  Wolver- 
hampton,  I  know.  It's  very  annoying  to 
have  one's  work  cut  into.  And  if  you  feel 
like  that  about  it,  when  the  old  lady  was  your 
,  aunt,  what  would  comparative  strangers 
frerm  London  •  feel,  if  they  had  to  waste  a 


They  both  looked  resentfully  at  the  still 
figure  under  the  sheet  on  the  bed,  but  Mr. 
Chase  could  not  help  feeling  that  the  solicitor 
was  a  little  over-inclined  to  dot  his  i's  in  the 


THE  HEIR  5 

avoidance  of  any  possible  hypocrisy.  He 
reflected,  however,  that  it  was,  in  the  long 
run,  preferable  to  the  opposite  method  of 
Mr.  Farebrother,  Nutley's  senior  partner,  who 
was  at  times  so  evasive  as  to  be  positively 
unintelligible. 

"  Very  tidy,  everything.  H'm — handker- 
chiefs, gloves,  little  bags  of  lavender  in  every 
drawer.  Yes,  just  what  I  should  have  expec- 
ted :  she  was  a  rare  one  for  having  everything 
spick  and  span.  She'd  go  for  the  servants, 
tapping  her  stick  sharp  on  the  boards,  if 
anything  wasn't  to  her  liking ;  and  they  all 
scuttled  about  as  though  they'd  been  wound 
up  after  she'd  done  with  them.  I  don't  know 
what  you'll  do  with  the  old  lady's  clothes, 
Mr.  Chase.  They  wouldn't  fetch  much,  you 
know,  with  the  exception  of  the  lace.  There's 
fine,  real  lace  here,  that  ought  to  be  worth 
something.  It's  all  down  in  the  heirloom 
book,  and  it'll  have  to  be  unpicked  off  the 
clothes.  But  for  the  rest,  say  twenty  pounds. 
These  silk  dresses  are  made  of  good  stuff,  I 
should  say,"  observed  Mr.  Nutley,  fingering 
a  row  of  black  dresses  that  hung  inside  a  cup- 
board, and  that  as  he  stirred  them  moved 
with  the  faint  rustle  of  dried  leaves  ;  "  take 
my  advice,  and  give  some  to  the  house- 


6  THE  HEIR 

keeper  ;  that'll  be  of  more  value  to  you  in 
the  end  than  the  few  pounds  you  might  get 
for  them.  Always  get  the  servants  on  your 
side,  is  my  axiom.  However,  it's  your  affair  ; 
you're  the  sole  heir,  and  there's  nobody  to 
interfere."  He  said  this  with  a  sarcastic 
inflection  detected  only  by  himself ;  a  warn- 
ing note  under  the  ostensible  deference^ of 
his  words  as  though  daring  Chase  to  assert 
his  rights  as  the  heir.  "  And,  anyway,"  he 
concluded,  "  we're  not  likely  to  find  any 
more  papers  in  here,  so  we're  wasting  time 
now.  Shall  we  go  down  ?  5! 

"  Wait  a  minute,  listen  :  what's  that  noise 
out  in  the  garden  ?  " 

"  Oh,  that  I  one  of  the  peacocks  screech- 
ing. There  are  at  least  fifty  of  the  damned 
birds.  Your  aunt  wouldn't  have  one  of  them 
killed,  not  one.  They  ruin  a  garden.  Your 
aunt  liked  the  garden,  and  she  liked  the  pea- 
cocks, but  she  liked  the  peacocks  better  than 
the  garden.  Screech,  screech — you'll  soon 
do  away  with  them.  At  least,  I  should  say 
you  would  do  away  with  them  if  you  were 
going  to  live  here.  I  can  see  you're  a  man  of 


sense." 


Mr.  Chase  drew  Mr.  Nutley  and  his  volu- 
bility out  on  to  the  landing,  closing  the  door 


THE  HEIR  7 

behind  him.  The  solicitor  ruffled  the  sheaf 
of  papers  he  carried  in  his  hand,  trying  to 
peep  between  the  sheets  that  were  fastened 
together  by  an  elastic  band. 

"  Well,"  he  said  briskly, "  if  you're  agree- 
able I  think  we  might  go  downstairs  and  find 
Farebrother  and  Colonel  Stanforth.  You 
see,  we  are  trying  to  save  you  all  the  time  we 
possibly  can.  What  about  the  old  lady  ?  do 
you  want  anyone  sent  in  to  sit  with  her  ?  " 

"  I  really  don't  know,"  said  Chase,  "  what's 
usually  done  ?  you  know  more  about  these 
things  than  I  do." 

"  Oh,  as  to  that,  I  should  think  I  ought 
to  !"  Nutley  replied  with  a  little  self-satisfied 
smirk.  "  Perhaps  you  won't  believe  me,  but 
most  weeks  I'm  in  a  house  with  a  corpse. 
There  are  usually  relatives,  of  course,  but  in 
this  case  if  you  wanted  anyone  sent  in  to  sit 
with  the  old  lady,  we  should  have  to  send  a 
servant.  Shall  I  call  Fortune  ?  " 

"  Perhaps  you  had  better — but  I  don't 
know :  Fortune  is  the  butler,  isn't  he  ? 
Well,  the  butler  told  me  all  the  servants 
were  very  busy." 

"  Then  it  might  be  as  well  not  to  disturb 
them  ?  At  any  rate,  the  old  lady  won't  run 
away,"  said  Mr.  Nutley  jocosely. 


8  THE  HEIR 

"  No,  perhaps  we  needn't  disturb  them." 
Chase  was  relieved  to  escape  the  necessity  of 
giving  an  order  to  a  servant. 

They  went  downstairs  together. 

"  Hold  on  to  the  banisters,  Mr.  Chase ; 
these  polished  stairs  are  very  tricky.  Fine 
old  oak ;  solid  steps  too ;  but  I  prefer  a 
drugget  myself.  Good  gracious,  how  that 
peacock  startled  me !  Look  at  it,  sitting  on 
the  ledge  outside  the  window.  It's  pecking 
at  the  panes  with  its  beak.  Shoo!  you 
great  gaudy  thing."  The  solicitor  flapped 
his  arms  at  it,  like  a  skinny  crow  beating  its 
wings. 

They  stopped  to  look  at  the  peacock, 
which,  walking  the  outside  ledge  with  spread 
tail,  seemed  to  form  part,  both  in  colour  and 
pattern,  of  the  great  heraldic  window  on 
the  landing  of  the  staircase.  The  sunlight 
streamed  through  the  colours,  and  the  square 
of  sunlight  on  the  boards  was  chequered  with 
patches  of  violet,  red,  and  indigo. 

"  Gaudy  ?  "  said  Chase.  "  It's  barbaric. 
Like  jewels.  Astonishing." 

Mr.  Nutley  glanced  at  him  with  a  faint 
contempt.  Chase  was  a  sandy,  weakly- 
looking  little  man,  with  thin  reddish  hair, 
freckles,  and  washy  blue  eyes.  He  wore 


THE  HEIR  9 

an  old  Norfolk  jacket  and  trousers  that  did 
not  match ;  Mr.  Nutley,  in  his  quick  impa- 
tient mind,  set  him  aside  as  reassuringly 
insignificant. 

"  Farebrother  and  Colonel  Stanforth  are 
in  the  library,  I  believe,"  Nutley  suggested. 

"  Don't  forget  to  introduce  me  to  Colonel 
Stanforth,"  said  Chase,  dismayed  at  having 
to  meet  yet  another  stranger.  "  He  was  an 
intimate  friend  of  my  aunt's,  wasn't  he  ? 
Is  he  the  only  trustee  ?  " 

"  The  other  one  died  and  was  never  re- 
placed. As  for  Colonel  Stanforth  being  an 
intimate  friend  of  the  old  lady,  he  was 
indeed  ;  about  the  only  friend  she  ever  had  ; 
she  frightened  everybody  else  away,"  said 
Nutley,  opening  the  library  door. 

"Ah,  Mr.  Chase!"  Mr.  Farebrother  ex- 
claimed in  a  relieved  and  propitiatory  tone. 

".We've  been  through  all  the  drawers," 
Mr.  Nutley  said,  his  briskness  redoubled  in 
his  partner's  presence.  "  We've  got  all  the 
necessary  papers — they  weren't  even  locked 
up — so  now  we  can  get  to  business.  With 
any  luck  Mr.  Chase  ought  to  see  himself  back 
at  Wolverhampton  within  the  week,  in  spite 
of  the  delay  over  the  funeral.  I've  told  Mr. 
Chase  that  it  isn't  strictly  correct  to  open 


10  THE  HEIR 

the  papers  before  the  funeral  is  over,  but 
that,  having  regard  to  his  affairs  in  Wolver- 
hampton,  and  in  view  of  the  fact  that  there 
are  no  other  relatives  whose  susceptibilities 
we  might  offend,  we  are  setting  to  work  at 
once."  He  was  bending  over  the  table, 
sorting  out  the  papers  as  he  talked,  but  now 
he  looked  up  and  saw  Chase  still  standing 
in  embarrassment  near  the  door.  "Dear  me, 
I  was  forgetting.  Mr.  Chase,  you  don't  know 
Colonel  Stanforth,  your  trustee,  I  think? 
Colonel  Stanforth  has  lived  outside  the  park 
gates  all  his  life,  and  I  wager  he  knows  every 
acre  of  your  estate  better  than  you  ever  will 
yourself,  Mr.  Chase." 

Mr.  Farebrother,  a  round  little  rosy  man 
in  large  spectacles,  smiled  benignly  as  Chase 
and  Stanforth  shook  hands.  He  liked  bring- 
ing the  heir  and  the  trustee  together,  but  his 
pleasure  was  clouded  by  Nutley's  last  remark, 
suggesting  as  it  did  that  Chase  would  never 
have  the  opportunity  of  learning  his  estate  ; 
he  felt  this  remark  to  be  in  poor  taste. 

"Oh,  come!  I  hope  we  shall  have  Mr. 
Chase  with  us  for  some  time,"  he  said  pleas- 
antly, "  although,"  he  added,  recollecting 
himself,  "  under  such  melancholy  circum- 
stances." He  had  never  been  known  to 


THE  HEIR  11 

make  any  more  direct  allusion  to  death  than 
that  contained  in  this  or  similarly  consecrated 
phrases.  Mr.  Nutley  pounced  instantly  upon 
the  evasion. 

"  After  all,  Farebrother,  Chase  never  knew 
the  old  lady,  remember.  The  melancholy 
part  of  it,  to  my  mind,  is  the  muddle  the 
estate  is  in.  Mortgaged  up  to  the  last 
shilling,  and  over-run  with  peacocks.  Won't 
you  come  and  sit  at  the  table,  Mr.  Chase  ? 
Here's  a  pencil  in  case  you  want  to  make  any 
notes." 

Colonel  Stanforth  came  up  to  the  table  at 
the  same  time.  Chase  shied  away,  and  went 
to  sit  on  the  window-seat.  Mr.  Farebrother 
began  a  little  preamble. 

"  We  sent  for  you  immediately,  Mr.  Chase  ; 
that  is  to  say,  Colonel  Stanforth,  who  was  on 
the  spot  at  the  moment  of  the  regrettable 
event,  communicated  with  us  and  with  you 
simultaneously.  We  should  like  to  welcome 
you,  with  all  the  sobriety  required  by  the 
cloud  which  must  hang  over  this  occasion, 
to  the  estate  which  has  been  in  the  possession 
of  your  family  for  the  past  five  hundred 
years.  We  should  like  to  express  our  infinite 
regret  at  the  embarrassments  under  which 
the  estate  will  be  found  to  labour.  We 

8 


12  THE  HEIR 

should  like  to  assure  you — I  am  speaking 
now  for  my  partner  and  myself — that  our 
firm  has  been  in  no  way  responsible  for  the 
management  of  the  estate.  Miss  Chase, 
your  aunt,  whom  I  immensely  revered,  was 
a  lady  of  determined  character  and  charitable 
impulses.  .  .  ." 

"  You  mean,  she  was  an  obstinate  old 
sentimentalist,"  said  Mr.  Nutley,  losing  his 
patience. 

Mr.  Farebrother  looked  gently  pained. 

"  Charitable  impulses,"  he  repeated, 
"  which  she  was  always  loth  to  modify. 
Colonel  Stanforth  will  tell  you  that  he  has  had 
many  a  discussion.  .  .  ."  ("  I  should  just 
think  so,"  said  Colonel  Stanforth,  "you 
could  argue  the  hind  leg  off  a  donkey,  but 
you  couldn't  budge  Phillida  Chase,")  "  there 
were  questions  of  undesirable  tenants  and 
what  not — I  confess  it  saddens  me  to  think 
of  Blackboys  so  much  encumbered.  .  .  ." 

"  Encumbered!  My  good  man,  the  place 
will  be  in  the  market  as  soon  as  I  can  get  it 
there,"  said  Mr.  Nutley,  interrupting  again, 
and  tapping  his  pencil  on  the  table. 

"  It  would  have  been  so  pleasant,"  said 
Mr.  Farebrother  sighing,  "if  matters  had  been 
in  an  entirely  satisfactory  condition,  and  our 


THE  HEIR  13 

duty  towards  Mr.  Chase  would  have  been  so 
joyfully  fulfilled.  Your  family,  Mr.  Chase, 
were  Lords  of  the  Manor  of  Blackboys  long 
before  any  house  was  built  upon  this  site. 
The  snapping  of  such  a  chain  of  tradition, 

55 

"  Out  of  date,  out  of  date,  my  good  man," 
said  Nutley,  full  of  contempt  and  surprisingly 
spiteful. 

"  Let's  get  on  to  the  will,"  suggested  Stan- 
forth. 

Mr.  Nutley  produced  it  with  alacrity. 

"  Dear,  dear,"  said  Mr.  Far ebr other,  wiping 
his  spectacles.  The  reading  of  a  will  was  to 
him  always  a  painful  proceeding.  It  was 
indeed  an  unkind  fate  which  had  cast  one  of 
his  amiable  and  conciliatory  nature  into  the 
melancholy  regions  of  the  law. 

"It's  very  short,"  said  Nutley,  and  read  it 
aloud. 

After  providing  for  a  legacy  of  five  hundred 
pounds  to  the  butler,  John  Fortune,  in  recog- 
nition of  his  long  and  devoted  service,  and  for 
a  legacy  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  to 
her  friend  Edward  Stanforth  "  in  anticipa- 
tion of  services  to  be  rendered  after  my  death," 
the  testator  devised  the  Manor  of  Blackboys 
and  the  whole  of  the  Blackboys  Estate  and 


14  THE  HEIR 

all  other  messuages  tenements  hereditaments 
and  premises  situate  in  the  counties  of  Kent 
and  Sussex  and  elsewhere  and  all  other  es- 
tates and  effects  whatsoever  and  wheresoever 
both  real  and  personal  to  her  nephew  Pere- 
grine Chase  at  present  of  Wolverhampton. 

"  Sensible  woman — she  got  a  solicitor  to 
draw  up  her  will,"  said  Mr.  Nutley  as  he 
ended  ;  "no  side-tracks,  no  ambiguities,  no 
bother.  Sensible  woman.  Now  we  can 
get  to  work." 

"Ah,  dear!"  said  Mr.  Farebrother  in 
wistful  reminiscence,  "  how  well  I  remember 
the  day  Miss  Chase  sent  for  me  to  assist  her 
in  the  making  of  that  will ;  it  was  just  such 
a  day  as  this,  and  after  I  had  been  waiting  a 
little  while  she  came  into  the  room,  a  black 
lace  cap  on  her  white  hair,  and  her  beautiful 
hands  leaning  on  the  top  of  her  stick — she  had 
very  beautiful  hands,  your  aunt,  Mr.  Chase, 
beautiful  cool  ivory  hands — and  I  remember 
she  was  singularly  gracious,  singularly  gra- 
cious ;  a  great  lady  of  the  old  school,  and  she 
was  pleased  to  twit  me  about  my  reluctance 
to  admit  that  some  day  even  she  .  .  .  ah, 
well,  will-making  is  a  painful  matter ;  but 
I  remember  her,  gallant  as  ever.  ..." 

"  That's  all  rubbish,   Farebrother,"   said 


THE  HEIR  15 

Mr.  Nutley  rudely,  as  his  partner  showed 
signs  of  meandering  indefinitely  on  ;  "  gra- 
cious, indeed !  When  you  know  she  terrified 
you  nearly  out  of  your  life.  You  always 
get  mawkish  like  this  about  people  once 
they're  dead." 

Mr.  Farebrother  blinked  mildly,  and  Nut- 
ley  continued  without  taking  any  further 
notice  of  him. 

"  You  haven't  done  so  well  out  of  this  as 
John  Fortune,"  he  said  to  Stanforth,  "  and 
you'll  have  a  deal  more  trouble." 

"  I  take  it,"  said  Stanforth,  getting  up  and 
striding  about  the  room,  "  that  in  the  matter 
of  this  estate  there  are  a  great  many  liabilities 
and  no  assets  to  speak  of,  except  the  estate 
itself?  To  start  with,  there's  a  twenty- 
thousand-pound  mortgage.  What's  the  in- 
come from  the  farms  ?  " 

"  A  bare  two  thousand  a  year." 

"  So  you  start  the  year  with  a  deficit, 
having  paid  off  your  income  tax  and  the 
interest  on  the  mortgage.  Disgusting,"  said 
Stanforth.  "  One  thing,  at  any  rate,  is 
clear  :  the  place  must  go.  One  could  just 
manage  to  keep  the  house,  of  course,  but  I 
don't  see  how  anyone  could  afford  to  live 
in  it,  having  kept  it.  The  land  isn't  worth 


16  THE  HEIR 

over  much,  but  luckily  we've  got  the  house 
and  gardens.  What  figure,  Nutley  ?  Thirty 
thousand  ?  Forty  ?  " 

Mr.  Nutley  whistled. 

"  You're  optimistic.  The  house  isn't  so 
very  large,  and  it's  inconvenient,  no  bath- 
rooms, no  electric  light,  no  garage,  no  central 
heating.  The  buyer  would  have  all  that  on 
his  hands,  and  the  moat  ought  to  be  cleaned 
out  too.  It's  insanitary." 

"  Still,  the  house  is  historical,"  said  Stan- 
forth ;  "I  think  we  can  safely  say  thirty 
thousand  for  the  house.  It's  a  perfect  speci- 
men of  Elizabethan,  so  I've  always  been  told, 
and  has  the  Tudor  moat  and  outbuildings 
into  the  bargain.  Thirty  thousand  for  the 
house,"  he  noted  on  a  piece  of  paper. 

"  I  wouldn't  care  for  it  myself,"  said  Mr. 
Nutley,  looking  round,  "  low  rooms,  dark 
passages,  a  stinking  moat,  and  a  slippery 
staircase.  If  that's  Tudor,  you're  welcome 
to  it."  His  voice  had  a  peculiarly  malignant 
intonation.  "  Still,  it's  a  gentleman's  place, 
I  don't  deny,  and  ought  to  make  an  interest- 
ing item  under  the  hammer."  He  passed  the 
tip  of  his  tongue  over  his  lips,  a  gesture 
horridly  voluptuous  in  one  so  sharp  and 
meagre. 


THE  HEIR  17 

"  Then  we  have  the  furniture  and  the  tapes- 
tries and  the  pictures,"  Stanforth  went  on. 
"  I  think  we  might  reckon  another  twenty 
thousand  for  them.  Americans,  you  know — 
or  the  buyer  of  the  house  might  care  for  some 
of  the  furniture.  The  pictures  aren't  of  much 
value,  so  I  understand,  save  as  of  family 
interest.  Twenty  thousand.  That  clears  off 
the  mortgage.  What  about  the  farmstand 
the  land  ?  " 

"  You  could  split  some  of  the  park  up  into 
building  lots,"  said  Mr.  Nutley. 

Mr.  Farebrother  gave  a  little  exclamation. 

"  The  park — it's  a  pretty  park,  Nutley." 

"  Very  pretty,  and  any  builder  who  chose 
to  run  up  half  a  dozen  villas  would  be  a  sen- 
sible chap,"  Mr.  Nutley  replied,  wilfully  mis- 
understanding him.  "  I  should  suggest  a  site 
at  the  top  of  the  hill,  where  you  get  the  view. 
What  do  you  think,  Colonel  Stanforth?" 

"  I  think  the  buyer  of  the  house  should  be 
given  the  option  of  buying  in  the  whole  of  the 
park,  that  section  being  reserved  at  the  price 
of  accommodation  land,  if  he  chooses  to  pay 
for  it." 

Mr.  Nutley  nodded.  He  approved  of 
Colonel  Stanforth  as  an  adequately  shrewd 
business  man. 


18  THE  HEIR 

"There  remain  the  farm  lands,"  he  said, 
referring  to  his  papers.  "  Two  thousand 
acres,  roughly ;  three  good  farm  houses ; 
and  a  score  of  cottages.  It's  a  little  difficult 
to  price.  Say,  taking  one  thing  in  with 
another,  twenty  pounds  an  acre,  including 
the  buildings — a  good  deal  of  the  land  is 
worth  less.  Forty  thousand.  We've  dis- 
posed now  of  all  the  assets.  We  shall  be 
lucky  if  we  can  clear  the  death-duties 
and  mortgage  out  of  the  proceeds  of  the 
sale,  and  let  Mr.  Chase  go  with  whatever 
amount  the  house  itself  fetches  to  bring 
him  in  a  few  hundreds  a  year  for  the  rest 
of  his  life." 

They  stared  across  at  Chase,  whose 
concern  with  the  affair  they  appeared 
hitherto  to  have  forgotten.  Mr.  Fare- 
brother  alone  kept  his  eyes  bent  down,  as 
very  meticulously  he  sharpened  the  point 
of  his  pencil. 

"  It's  an  unsatisfactory  situation,"  said 
Mr.  Nutley  ;  "  if  I  were  Chase  I  should  resent 
being  dragged  away  from  my  ordinary  busi- 
ness on  such  an  unprofitable  affair.  He'll  be 
lucky,  as  you  say,  if  he  clears  the  actual  value 
of  the  house  for  himself  after  everything  is 
settled  up.  Now,  are  we  to  try  for  auction 


THE  HEIR  19 

or  private  treaty  ?  Personally  I  think  the 
house  at  any  rate  will  go  by  private 
treaty.  The  present  tenants  will  probably 
buy  in  their  own  farms.  But  the  house,  if 
it's  reasonably  well  advertised,  ought  to 
attract  a  number  of  private  buyers.  We 
must  have  a  decent  caretaker  to  show  people 
over  the  place.  I  suggest  the  present  butler? 
He  was  in  Miss  Chase's  service  for  thirty 
years."  He  looked  round  for  approval ; 
Chase  and  Stanforth  both  nodded,  though 
Chase  felt  so  much  of  an  outsider  that  he 
wondered  whether  Nutley  would  consider 
him  justified  in  nodding.  "  Ring  the  bell, 
Farebrother,  will  you  ?  It's  just  behind  you. 
Look  at  the  bell,  gentlemen!  what  an  anti- 
quated arrangement !  There's  no  doubt,  the 
house  is  terribly  inconvenient." 

Fortune,  the  butler,  came  in,  a  thin  grizzled 
man  in  decent  black. 

"  Perhaps  you  had  better  give  your  instruc- 
tions, Nutley,"  Chase  said  from  the  window- 
seat  as  the  solicitor  glanced  at  him  with 
conventional  hesitation. 

"  I'm  speaking  for  Mr.  Chase,  Fortune," 
said  Mr.  Nutley.  "Your  late  mistress's  will 
unfortunately  isn't  very  satisfactory,  and 
Blackboys  will  be  in  the  market  before  very 


20  THE  HEIR 

long.  We  want  you  to  stay  on  until  then, 
with  such  help  as  you  need,  and  you  must  tell 
the  other  servants  they  have  all  a  month's 
notice.  By  the  way,  you  inherit  five  hundred 
pounds  under  the  will,  but  it'll  be  some  time 
before  you  get  it." 

"  Blackboys  in  the  market  ?  "  Fortune 
began. 

"  Oh,  my  good  man,  don't  start  lamenting 
again  here,"  exclaimed  Mr.  Nutley  hurriedly  ; 
"  think  of  those  five  hundred  pounds — a  very 
nice  little  sum  of  which  we  should  all  be  glad, 
I'm  sure." 

"  Dear  me,  dear  me,"  said  Mr.  Farebrother, 
much  distressed,  and  he  got  up  and  patted 
Fortune  on  the  shoulder. 

Nutley  was  collecting  the  papers  again  into 
a  neat  packet,  boxing  them  together  on  the 
table  as  though  they  had  been  a  pack  of 
cards.  He  glanced  up  to  say, 

"  That  settled,  Fortune  ?  Then  we  needn't 
keep  you  any  longer ;  thanks.  Well,  Mr. 
Chase,  if  there's  anything  we  can  do  for  you 
to-morrow,  you  have  only  to  ring  me  up  or 
Farebrother — oh,  I  forgot,  of  course,  you 
aren't  on  the  telephone  here." 

Chase,  who  had  been  thinking  to  himself 
that  Nutley  was  a  splendid  man — really 


THE  HEIR  21 

efficient,  a  first-class  man,  was  suddenly 
aware  that  he  resented  the  implied  criticism. 

"  I  can  go  to  the  post-office  if  I  want  to 
telephone,"  he  said  coldly. 

Mr.  Farebrother  noticed  the  coldness  in 
his  tone,  and  thought  regretfully,  "  Dear  me, 
Nutley  has  offended  him — ignored  him  com- 
pletely all  the  time.  I  ought  to  have  put  that 
right — very  remiss  of  me." 

He  said  aloud, 

"  If  Mr.  Chase  would  prefer  not  to  sleep 
in  the  house,  I  should  be  very  glad  to  offer 
him  hospitality.  ..." 

"  Afraid  of  the  old  lady's  ghost,  Chase  ?  " 
said  Mr.  Nutley  with  a  laugh  that  concealed  a 
sneer. 

They  all  laughed,  with  exception  of  Mr. 
Farebrother,  who  was  pained. 

Chase  was  tired ;  he  wished  they  would  go ; 
he  wanted  to  be  alone. 


II 

HE  was  alone  ;  they  had  gone,  Stanforth 
striding  off  across  the  park  in  his  rather  osten- 
tatious suit  of  large  checks  and  baggy  knicker- 
bockers, the  two  solicitors,  with  their  black 
leather  hand-bags,  trundling  down  the  avenue 


22  THE  HEIR 

in  the  station  cab.  They  had  gone,  they 
and  their  talk  of  mortgages,  rents,  acreage, 
tenants,  possible  buyers,  building  lots,  and 
sales  by  auction  or  private  treaty!  Chase 
stood  on  the  bridge  above  the  moat,  watching 
their  departure.  He  was  still  a  little  con- 
fused in  his  mind,  not  having  had  time  to 
turn  round  and  think  since  Stanforth's  tele- 
gram had  summoned  him  that  morning. 
Arrived  at  Blackboys,  he  had  been  imme- 
diately commandeered  by  Nutley,  had  had 
wishes  and  opinions  put  into  his  mouth,  and 
had  found  a  complete  set  of  intentions  ready- 
made  for  him  to  assume  as  his  own.  That 
had  all  saved  him  a  lot  of  trouble,  undoubt- 
edly ;  but  nevertheless  he  was  glad  of  a 
breathing-space;  there  were  things  he  wanted 
to  think  over ;  ideas  he  wanted  to  get  used 
to.  ... 

He  was  poor ;  and  hard-working  in  a 
cheerless  fashion  ;  he  managed  a  branch  of  a 
small  insurance  company  in  Wolverhampton, 
and  expected  nothing  further  of  life.  Not 
very  robust,  his  days  in  an  office  left  him  with 
little  energy  after  he  had  conscientiously 
carried  out  his  business.  He  lived  in  lodg- 
ings in  Wolverhampton,  smoking  rather 
too  much  and  eating  rather  too  little.  He 


THE   HEIR  23 

had  neither  loved  nor  married.  He  had 
always  known  that  some  day,  when  his  sur- 
viving aunt  was  dead,  he  would  inherit 
Blackboys,  but  Blackboys  was  only  a  name 
to  him,  and  he  had  gauged  that  the  inheritance 
would  mean  for  him  nothing  but  trouble  and 
interruption,  and  that  once  the  whole  affair 
was  wound  up  he  would  resume  his  habitual 
existence  just  where  he  had  dropped  it. 

His  occupations  and  outlook  might  thus 
be  comprehensively  summarized. 

He  turned  to  look  back  at  the  house.  Any 
man  brighter-hearted  and  more  optimistic 
might  have  rejoiced  in  this  enforced  expedi- 
tion as  a  holiday,  but  Chase  was  neither  opti- 
mistic nor  bright-hearted.  He  took  life  with 
a  dreary  and  rather  petulant  seriousness,  and, 
full  of  resentment  against  this  whole  unpro- 
fitable errand,  was  dwelling  now  upon  the 
probable,  the  almost  certain,  inefficiencies 
of  his  subordinates  in  Wolverhampton,  be- 
cause he  had  in  him  an  old-maidish  trait  that 
could  not  endure  the  thought  of  other  people 
interfering  with  his  business  or  his  possessions. 
He  worried,  in  his  small  anaemic  mind  that 
was  too  restricted  to  be  contemptuous,  and 
too  diffident  to  be  really  bad-tempered.  .  .  . 
The  house  looked  down  at  him,  grave  and 


24  THE  HEIR 

mellow.  Its  fa$ade  of  old,  plum- coloured 
bricks,  the  inverted  V  of  the  two  gables,  the 
rectangles  of  the  windows,  and  the  creamy 
stucco  of  the  little  colonnade  that  joined  the 
two  projecting  wings,  all  reflected  unbroken 
in  the  green  stillness  of  the  moat.  It  was  not 
a  large  house  ;  it  consisted  only  of  the  two 
wings  and  the  central  block,  but  it  was  com- 
plete and  perfect ;  so  perfect,  that  Chase, 
who  knew  and  cared  nothing  about  architec- 
ture, and  whose  mind  was  really  absent, 
worrying,  in  Wolverhampton,  was  gradually 
softened  into  a  comfortable  satisfaction. 
The  house  was  indeed  small,  sweet,  and  satis- 
fying. There  was  no  fault  to  be  found  with 
the  house.  It  was  lovely  in  colour  and  de- 
sign. It  carried  off,  in  its  perfect  proportions, 
the  grandeur  of  its  manner  with  an  easy  dig- 
nity. It  was  quiet,  the  evening  was  quiet, 
the  country  was  quiet ;  it  was  part  of  the 
evening  and  the  country.  The  country  was 
almost  unknown  to  Chase,  whose  life  had 
been  spent  in  towns — factory  towns.  Here 
he  was  on  the  borders  of  Kent  and  Sussex 
where  the  nearest  town  was  a  village,  a  jumble 
of  cottages  round  a  green,  at  his  own  park- 
gates.  The  house  seemed  to  lie  at  the  very 
heart  of  peace. 


THE  HEIR  25 

A  little  wooden  gate,  moss-grown  and 
slightly  dilapidated,  cut  off  the  bridge  from 
the  gravelled  entrance-space  ;  he  shut  and 
latched  it,  and  stood  on  the  island  that  the 
moat  surrounded.  Swallows  were  swooping 
along  the  water,  for  the  air  was  full  of  insects 
in  the  golden  haze  of  the  May  evening. 
Faint  clouds  of  haze  hung  about,  blue  and 
gold,  deepening  the  mystery  of  the  park, 
shrouding  the  recesses  of  the  garden.  The 
place  was  veiled.  Chase  put  out  his  hand  as 
though  to  push  aside  a  veil.  .  .  . 

He  detected  himself  in  the  gesture,  and 
glanced  round  guiltily  to  see  whether  he  was 
observed.  But  he  was  alone  ;  even  the  cur- 
tains behind  the  windows  were  drawn.  He 
felt  a  desire  to  explore  the  garden,  but  hesi- 
tated, timorous  and  apologetic.  Hitherto 
in  his  life  he  had  explored  only  other  people's 
gardens  on  the  rare  days  when  they  were 
opened  to  the  public  ;  he  remembered  with 
what  pained  incredulity  he  had  watched  the 
public  helping  itself  to  the  flowers  out  of  the 
borders,  for  he  could  not  help  being  a  great 
respecter  of  property.  He  prided  himself, 
of  course,  on  being  a  Socialist ;  that  was  the 
fashion  amongst  the  young  men  he  occasion- 
ally frequented  in  Wolverhampton ;  but 


26  THE  HEIR 

unlike  them  he  was  a  Socialist  whose  sense  of 
veneration  was  deeper  and  more  instinctive 
than  his  socialism.  He  had  thought  at  the 
time  that  he  would  be  very  indignant  if  he 
were  the  owner  of  the  garden.  Now  that  he 
actually  was  the  owner,  he  hesitated  before 
entering  the  garden,  with  a  sense  of  intrusion. 
Had  he  caught  sight  of  a  servant  he  would 
certainly  have  turned  and  strolled  off  in  the 
opposite  direction. 

The  house  lay  in  the  hollow  at  the  bottom 
of  a  ridge  of  wooded  hills  that  sheltered  it 
from  the  north,  but  the  garden  was  upon  the 
slope  of  the  hill,  in  design  quite  simple  :  a 
central  walk  divided  the  square  garden  into 
halves,  eased  into  very  flat,  shallow  steps, 
and  outlined  by  a  low  stone  coping.  A  wall 
surrounded  the  whole  garden.  To  reach  the 
garden  from  the  house,  you  crossed  a  little 
footbridge  over  the  moat,  at  the  bottom  of 
the  central  walk.  This  simplicity,  so  obvious, 
yet,  like  the  house,  so  satisfying,  could  not 
possibly  have  been  otherwise  ordered  ;  it  was 
married  to  the  lie  of  the  land.  It  flattered 
Chase  with  the  delectable  suggestion  that  he, 
a  simple  fellow,  could  have  conceived  and 
carried  out  the  scheme  as  well  as  had  the 
architect. 


THE  HEIR  27 

He  was  bound  to  admit  that  a  simple  fellow 
would  not  have  thought  of  the  peacocks. 
They  were  the  royal  touch  that  redeemed  the 
gentle  friendliness  of  the  house  and  garden 
from  all  danger  of  complacency.  He  paused 
in  amazement  now  at  his  first  real  sight  of 
them.  All  the  way  up  the  low  stone  wall 
on  either  side  of  the  central  walk  they  sat, 
thirty  or  forty  of  them,  their  long  tails  sweep- 
ing down  almost  to  the  ground,  the  delicate 
crowns  upon  their  heads  erect  in  a  feathery 
line  of  perspective,  and  the  blue  of  their 
breasts  rich  above  the  grey  stone  coping. 
Half  way  up  the  walk,  the  coping  was  broken 
by  two  big  stone  balls,  and  upon  one  of  these 
a  peacock  stood  with  his  tail  fully  spread 
behind  him,  and  uttered  his  discordant  cry 
as  though  in  the  triumph  and  pride  of  his 
beauty. 

Chase  paused.  He  was  too  shy  even  to 
disturb  those  regal  birds.  He  imagined  the 
swirl  of  colour  and  the  screech  of  indignation 
that  would  accompany  his  advance,  and  be- 
fore their  arrogance  his  timidity  was  abashed. 
But  he  stood  there  for  a  very  long  while, 
looking  at  them,  until  the  garden  became 
swathed  in  the  shrouds  of  the  blue  evening, 
very  dusky  and  venerable.  He  did  not  pass 


28  THE  HEIR 

over  the  moat,  but  stood  on  the  little  bridge, 
between  the  house  and  the  garden,  while 
those  shrouds  of  evening  settled  with  the  hush 
of  vespers  round  him,  and  as  he  looked  he 
kept  saying  to  himself  "  Mine  ?  mine  ?  " 
in  a  puzzled  and  deprecatory  way. 

Ill 

WHEN  Fortune  showed  him  his  room  before 
dinner  he  was  silent  and  inclined  to  scoff. 
He  had  been  shown  the  other  rooms  by  Nut- 
ley  when  he  first  arrived,  and  had  gazed  at 
them,  accepting  them  without  surprise,  much 
as  he  would  have  gazed  at  rooms  in  some 
show-place  or  princely  palace  that  he  had 
paid  a  shilling  to  visit.  The  hall,  the  dining 
room,  the  library,  the  long  gallery — he 
had  looked  at  them  all,  and  had  nodded  in 
reply  to  the  solicitor's  comments,  but  not  for 
a  moment  had  it  entered  his  head  to  regard 
the  rooms  as  his  own.  To  be  left,  however, 
in  this  room  that  resembled  all  the  others, 
and  to  be  told  that  it  was  his  bedroom ;  to 
realize  that  he  was  to  sleep  inside  that  bro- 
caded four-poster  with  the  ostrich  plumes 
nodding  on  the  top ;  to  envisage  the  trivial 
and  vulgar  functions  of  his  daily  dressing 


THE  HEIR  29 

and  undressing  as  taking  place  within  this 
room  that  although  so  small  was  yet  so 
stately- — this  was  a  shock  that  made  him 
draw  in  his  breath.  Left  alone,  his  hand 
raised  to  give  a  tug  at  his  tie,  he  stared 
round  and  emitted  a  soft  whistle.  The  walls 
were  hung  with  tapestry,  a  grey-green  land- 
scape of  tapestry,  the  borders  formed  by  two 
fat  twisted  columns,  looped  across  with  gar- 
lands of  flowers  and  fruits,  and  cherubs  with 
distended  cheeks  blew  zephyrs  across  this 
woven  Arcady.  High-backed  Stuart  chairs 
of  black  and  gold.  .  .  .  Chase  wanted  to  take 
off  his  boots,  but  did  not  venture  to  sit  down 
on  the  tawny  cane-work.  He  moved  about 
gingerly,  afraid  of  spoiling  something.  Then 
he  remembered  that  everything  was  his  to 
spoil  if  he  so  chose.  Everything  waited  on 
his  good  pleasure ;  the  whole  house,  all 
those  rooms,  the  garden  ;  all  those  unknown 
farms  and  acres  that  Nutley  and  Stanforth 
had  discussed.  The  thought  produced  no 
exhilaration  in  him,  but,  rather,  an  extreme 
embarrassment  and  alarm.  He  was  more 
than  ever  dismayed  to  think  that  someone, 
sooner  or  later,  was  certain  to  come  to  him 
for  orders.  .  .  . 

He  hesitated  for  an  appreciable  time  before 


30  THE   HEIR 

making  up  his  mind  to  go  down  to  dinner ; 
in  fact,  even  after  he  had  resolutely  pushed 
open  his  bedroom  door,  he  still  wavered  upon 
its  threshold.     The  landing,  lit  by  the  yellow 
flame  of  a  solitary  candle  stuck  into  a  silver 
sconce,  was  full  of  shadows  :   the  well  of  the 
staircase  gaped  black  ;    and  across  the  great 
window  red  velvet  curtains  had  been  drawn, 
and  now  hung  from  floor  to  ceiling.     Down 
the  passage,  behind  one  of  those  mysterious 
closed  doors,  lay  the  old  woman  dead  in  her 
pompous    bed.     So    the    house    must    have 
drowsed,  evening  after  evening,  before  Chase 
ever  came  near  it,  with  the  only  difference 
that  from  one  of  those  doors  had  emerged 
an  old  lady  dressed  in  black  silk,  leaning  on  a 
stick,  an  arbitrary  old  lady,  who  had  slowly 
descended  the  polished  stairs,  carefully  plac- 
ing the  rubber  ferule  of  her  stick  from  step 
to  step,  and  helping  herself  on  the  banisters 
with  the  other  hand,  instead  of  the  alien 
clerk  from  Wolverhampton,   who  hesitated 
to  go  downstairs  to  dinner  because  he  feared 
there  would  be  a  servant  in  the  room  to  wait 
upon  him. 

There  was.  Chase  dined  miserably,  and 
was  relieved  only  when  he  was  left  alone,  port 
and  madeira  set  before  him,  and  the  four 


THE  HEIR  31 

candles  reflected  in  the  shining  oak  table. 
A  greyhound,  which  had  joined  him  at  the 
foot  of  the  stairs,  now  sat  gravely  beside  him, 
and  he  gave  him  bits  of  biscuit  as  he  had  not 
dared  to  do  in  the  presence  of  the  servant. 
More  at  his  ease  at  last,  he  sat  thinking  what 
he  would  do  with  the  few  hundreds  a^  year 
Nutley  predicted  for  him.  Not  such  an 
unprofitable  business  after  all,  perhaps!  He 
would  be  able  to  move  from  his  lodgings  in 
Wolverhampton ;  perhaps  he  could  take  a 
small  villa  with  a  little  bit  of  garden  in  front. 
His  imagination  did  not  extend  beyond  Wol- 
verhampton. Perhaps  he  could  keep  back 
one  or  two  pieces  of  plate  from  the  sale  ;  he 
would  like  to  have  something  to  remind  him 
of  his  connection  with  Blackboys  and  with 
his  family.  He  cautiously  picked  up  a 
porringer  that  was  the  only  ornament  on  the 
table,  and  examined  it.  It  gave  him  a  little 
shock  of  familiarity  to  see  that  the  coat- of  - 
arms  engraved  on  it  was  the  same  as  the  coat 
on  his  own  signet  ring,  inherited  from  his 
father,  and  the  motto  was  the  same  too  : 
Intabescantque  Relictd,  and  the  tiny  peregrine 
falcon  as  the  crest.  Absurd  to  be  surprised! 
He  ought  to  remember  that  he  wasn't  a 
stranger  here  ;  he  was  Chase,  no  less  than  the 


32  THE   HEIR 

old  lady  had  been  Chase,  no  less  than  all  the 
portraits  upstairs  were  Chase.  He  had  al- 
ready seen  that  coat-of-arms  to-day,  in  the 
heraldic  window,  but  without  taking  in  its 
meaning.  It  gave  him  a  new  sense  of  confi- 
dence now,  reassuring  him  that  he  wasn't  the 
interloper  he  felt  himself  to  be. 

It  was  pleasant  enough  to  linger  here,  with 
silence  and  shadows  all  round  the  pool  of 
candlelight,  that  lit  the  polish  of  the  table, 
the  curves  of  the  silver,  and  the  dark  wine  in 
the  round-bellied  decanters ;  pleasant  to 
dream  of  that  villa  which  might  now  be  at- 
tainable ;  but  he  had  better  go,  or  the  servant 
would  be  coming  to  clear  away. 

Rising,  he  went  out  into  the  hall,  followed 
by  the  dog,  who  seemed  to  have  adopted  him 
unquestioningly.  As  Chase  didn't  know  his 
name,  he  bent  down  to  read  the  inscription 
on  the  collar,  but  found  only  the  address  : 
CHASE,  BLACKED YS.  That  had  been  the  old 
lady's  address,  of  course,  but  it  would  do  for 
him  too  ;  he  needn't  have  the  collar  altered. 
CHASE,  BLACKBOYS.  It  was  simply  handed 
on  ;  no  change.  It  gave  him  a  queer  sensa- 
tion ;  this  coming  to  Blackboys  was  certainly 
a  queer  experience,  interrupting  his  life.  He 
scarcely  knew  where  he  was  as  yet,  or  what 


THE   HEIR  33 

he  was  doing ;    he  had  to  keep  reminding 
himself  with  an  effort. 

In  the  hall  he  hesitated,  uncertain  as  to 
which  was  the  door  of  the  library,  afraid  that 
if  he  opened  the  wrong  door  he  would  find 
himself  in  the  servants'  quarters,  perhaps 
even  open  it  on  them  as  they  sat  at  supper. 
The  dog  stood  in  front  of  one  door,  wagging 
his  tail  and  looking  up  at  Chase,  so  he  tried 
the  handle ;  it  was  the  wrong  door,  but 
instead  of  leading  to  the  servants'  quarters 
it  opened  straight  on  to  the  moonlit  garden. 
The  greyhound  bounded  out  and  ran  about 
in  the  moonlight,  a  wraith  of  a  dog  in  the 
ghostly  garden.  Ghostly.  .  .  .  Chase  wan- 
dered out,  up  the  walk  to  the  top  of  the  gar- 
den, where  he  turned  to  look  down  upon  the 
house,  folded  black  in  the  hollow,  the  moon- 
light gleaming  along  the  moat  and  winking  on 
a  window.  Not  a  breath  ruffled  that  milky 
stillness  ;  the  great  cloths  of  light  lay  spread 
out  over  the  grass,  the  blocks  of  shadow  were 
profound ;  above  the  low-lying  park  trailed 
a  faint  white  mist,  and  in  a  vaporous  sky 
the  moon  rode  calm  and  sovereign.  Chase 
felt  that  on  a  scene  so  perfectly  set  something 
ought  to  happen.  A  pity  that  it  should  all 
be  wasted.  .  .  .  How  many  such  nights 


34  THE  HEIR 

must  have  been  wasted!  the  prodigal  love- 
liness of  summer  nights,  lying  illusory  under 
the  moon,  shamelessly  soliciting  romance! 
But  nothing  happened ;  there  was  nothing 
but  Chase  looking  down  on  the  silent  house, 
looking  for  a  long  time  down  on  the  silent 
house,  and  thinking  that,  on  that  night  so  set 
for  a  lovers'  meeting,  no  lovers  had  met. 

IV 

HE  was  very  glad  when  the  funeral  was  over, 
and  he  was  rid  of  all  the  strange  neighbours 
who  had  wrung  his  hand  and  uttered  com- 
miserating phrases.  He  was  also  glad  that 
the  house  should  be  relieved  of  the  presence 
of  his  aunt,  for  he  could  tread  henceforth 
unrestrained  by  the  idea  that  the  corpse  might 
rise  up  and  with  a  pointing  finger  denounce 
his  few  and  timorous  orders.  He  stood  now 
on  the  threshold  of  the  library  downstairs, 
looking  at  a  bowl  of  coral- coloured  tulips 
whose  transparent  delicacy  detached  itself 
brightly  in  the  sober  panelled  room.  He  was 
grateful  to  the  quietness  that  slumbered 
always  over  the  house,  abolishing  fret  as  by  a 
calm  rebuke. 

His  recollections  of  the  funeral  were,  he 


THE  HEIR  35 

found  to  his  dismay,  principally  absurd.  Mr. 
Farebrother  had  sidled  up  to  him,  when  he 
thought  Nutley  was  preoccupied  elsewhere, 
as  they  returned  on  foot  up  the  avenue  after 
the  ceremony.  "  A  great  pity  the  place 
should  have  to  go,"  Mr.  Farebrother  had  said, 
trotting  along  beside  him,  "  such  a  very  great 
pity."  Chase  had  agreed  in  a  perfunctory 
way.  "  Perhaps  it  won't  come  to  that," 
said  Mr.  Farebrother  with  a  vague  hopeful- 
ness. Chase  again  murmured  something  in 
the  nature  of  agreement.  "  I  like  to  think 
things  will  come  right  until  the  moment  they 
actually  go  wrong,"  Mr.  Farebrother  said 
with  a  smile.  "  Very  sad,  too,  the  death  of 
your  aunt,"  he  added.  "  Yes,"  said  Chase. 
"  Well,  well,  perhaps  it  isn't  so  bad  as  we 
think,"  said  Mr.  Farebrother,  causing  Chase 
to  stare  at  him,  thoroughly  startled  this 
time  by  the  extent  of  the  rosy  old  man's 
optimism. 

But  he  was  not  now  dwelling  upon  the 
funeral.  To-morrow  he  must  leave  Black- 
boys.  No  doubt  he  would  find  his  affairs  in 
Wolverhampton  in  a  terrible  way.  He  said 
to  himself,  "  Tut-tut,"  his  mind  absent,  though 
his  eyes  were  still  upon  the  tulips  ;  but  his 
annoyance  over  the  office  in  Wolverhampton 


36  THE  HEIR 

was  largely  superficial.  Business  had  a  claim 
on  him,  certainly  ;  the  business  of  his  em- 
ployers ;  but  his  own  private  business  had  a 
claim  too,  that,  moreover,  would  take  up  but 
a  month  or  two  out  of  his  life  ;  after  that 
Blackboys  would  be  sold,  and  would  engage 
no  more  of  his  time  away  from  Wolver- 
hampton.  Blackboys  would  pass  to  other 
hands,  making  no  further  demands  upon 
Peregrine  Chase.  It  would  be  a  queer  little 
incident  to  look  back  upon  ;  his  few  acquain- 
tances in  Wolverhampton,  with  whom  he 
sometimes  played  billiards  of  an  evening,  or 
joined  in  a  whist  drive,  would  stare,  derisive 
and  incredulous,  if  the  story  ever  leaked  out, 
at  the  idea  of  Chase  as  a  landed  proprietor. 
As  a  squire!  As  the  descendant  of  twenty 
generations!  Why,  no  one  in  Wolverhamp- 
ton knew  so  much  as  his  Christian  name  ;  he 
had  been  careful  always  to  sign  his  letters 
with  a  discreet  initial,  so  that  if  they  thought 
of  it  at  all  they  probably  thought  him  Percy. 
A  friend  would  have  nosed  it  out.  There 
was  a  safeguard  in  friendlessness.  Chase  was 
a  reticent  little  man,  as  his  solicitors  had  had 
occasion  to  remark.  Nutley  found  this  very 
convenient :  Chase,  making  no  comment, 
left  him  free  to  manage  everything  according 


THE  HEIR  37 

to  his  own  ideas.  Indeed,  Nutley  frequently 
forgot  his  very  existence.  It  was  most  con- 
venient. 

As  for  Chase,  he  wondered  sometimes  ab- 
sently which  he  disliked  least :  Farebrother 
with  his  weak  sentimentality,  or  Nutley,  who 
was  so  astute,  so  bent  upon  getting  Blackboys 
brilliantly  into  the  market,  and  whose  grudg- 
ing respect  for  old  Miss  Chase,  beneath  his 
impatience  of  the  tyranny  she  had  imposed 
upon  him,  was  so  readily  divined. 

Chase  stood  looking  at  the  bowl  of  tulips  ; 
it  seemed  to  him  that  he  spent  his  days  for 
ever  looking  at  something,  and  deriving  from 
it  that  new,  quiet  satisfaction.  He  was 
revolving  in  his  mind  a  phrase  of  Mr.  Fare- 
brother's,  to  the  effect  that  he  ought  to  go 
the  rounds  and  call  upon  his  tenants.  "  They'll 
expect  it,  you  know,"  Farebrother  had  said, 
examining  Chase  over  the  top  of  his  spectacles. 
Chase  had  gone  through  a  moment  of  panic, 
until  he  remembered  that  his  departure  on 
the  morrow  would  postpone  this  ordeal.  But 
it  remained  uncomfortably  with  him.  He 
had  seen  his  tenants  at  the  funeral,  and  had 
eyed  them  surreptitiously  when  he  thought 
they  were  not  noticing  him.  They  were  all 
farmers,  big,  heavy,  kindly  men,  whose 


38  THE  HEIR 

manner  had  adopted  little  Chase  into  the 
shelter  of  an  interested  benevolence.  He 
had  liked  them ;  distinctly  he  had  liked  them. 
But  to  call  upon  them  in  their  homes,  to 
intrude  upon  their  privacy — he  who  of  all 
men  had  a  wilting  horror  of  intrusion,  that 
was  another  matter. 

He  enjoyed  being  alone  himself  ;  he  had  a 
real  taste  for  solitude,  and  luxuriated  now  in 
his  days  and  particularly  his  evenings  at 
Blackboys,  when  he  sat  over  the  fire,  stirring 
the  great  heap  of  soft  grey  ashes  with  the 
poker,  the  ashes  that  were  never  cleared 
away ;  he  liked  the  woolly  thud  when 
the  poker  dropped  among  them.  Those 
evenings  were  pleasant  to  him  ;  pleasant  and 
new,  though  sometimes  he  felt  that  in  spite 
of  their  novelty  they  had  been  always  a 
part  of  his  life.  Moreover  he  had  a  compan- 
ion, for  Thane,  the  greyhound,  slim  and  fawn- 
coloured,  lay  by  the  fire  asleep,  with  his  nose 
along  his  paws. 

There  existed  in  his  mind  a  curious  con- 
fusion in  regard  to  his  tenants,  a  confusion 
quite  childish,  but  which  carried  with  it  a 
sort  of  terror.  It  dated  from  the  day  when, 
for  want  of  something  better  to  do,  he  had 
turned  over  some  legal  papers  left  behind  by 


THE   HEIR  39 

Nutley,  and  the  dignity  of  his  manor  had 
disclosed  itself  to  him  in  all  the  brocaded 
stiffness  of  its  ancient  ritual  and  phraseology. 
He  had  laughed ;  he  could  not  help  laughing ; 
but  he  had  been  impressed  and  even  a  little 
awed.  The  weight  of  legend  seemed  to  lie 
suddenly  heavy  upon  his  shoulders,  and  he 
had  gazed  at  his  own  hands,  as  though  he 
expected  to  see  them  mysteriously  loaded 
with  rough  hierarchical  rings.  Vested  in 
him,  all  this  antiquity  and  surviving  cere- 
monial !  He  read  again  the  almost  incompre- 
hensible words  that  had  first  caught  his  eye, 
scraps  here  and  there  as  he  turned  the  pages. 
"  There  are  three  teams  in  demesne,  31 
villains,  with  14  bordars,  i.e.,  the  class  who 
should  not  pay  live  heriot.  The  furrow-long 
measures  40  roods,  i.e.,  40  lengths  of  the 
Ox-goad  of  16|  feet,  a  rod  just  long  enough  to 
lie  along  the  yokes  of  the  first  three  pair  of 
Oxen,  and  let  the  ploughman  thrust  with  the 
point  at  either  flank  of  either  the  sod  ox  or 
the  sward  ox.  Such  a  strip  four  rods  in 
width  gives  an  acre."  "  There  is  wood  of 
75  Hogs.  The  Hogs  must  be  panage  Hogs, 
one  in  seven,  paid  each  year  for  the  right  to 
feed  the  herd  in  the  Lord  of  the  Manor's 
wooded  wastes." 


40  THE  HEIR 

What  on  earth  were  panage  hogs,  to 
which  apparently  he  was  entitled  ? 

He  read  again,  "  The  quantum  of  liberty 
of  person  and  alienation  originally  enjoyed 
by  those  now  represented  by  the  Free  Ten- 
ants of  the  Manor  is  a  matter  of  argument  for 
the  theorists.  The  free  tenants  were  liberi 
homines  within  the  statute  Quia  Emptores 
Terrarum,  and  as  such  from  1289  could  sell 
their  holdings  to  whomsoever  they  would, 
without  the  Lord's  licence,  still  less  without 
surrender  or  admittance,  saving  always  the 
condition  that  the  feoffee  do  hold  of  the  same 
Lord  as  feoffor.  And  the  feoffee  must  hold, 
i.e.,  must  acknowledge  that  he  hold.  There 
must  be  a  tenure  in  fact  and  the  Lord  must 
know  his  new  tenant  as  such.  Some  privity 
must  be  established.  The  new  tenant  must 
do  fealty  and  say  '  I  hold  of  you,  the  Lord.' 
An  alienation  without  such  acknowledge- 
ment is  not  good  against  the  Lord." 

He  laid  down  the  papers.  Could  such 
things  be  actualities  ?  This  must  be  the  copy 
of  some  old  record  he  had  got  hold  of.  But 
no ;  he  turned  back  to  the  first  page  and 
found  the  date  of  the  previous  year.  It 
appalled  him  to  think  that  since  such  things 
had  happened  to  his  aunt,  they  were  also 


THE  HEIR  41 

liable  to  happen  to  him.  What  would  he 
do  with  a  panage  hog,  supposing  one  were 
driven  up  to  the  front  door  ?  Still  less  would 
he  know  what  to  do  if  one  of  those  farmers 
he  had  seen  at  the  funeral  were  to  say  to  him, 
"  I  hold  of  you,  the  Lord." 

Then  he  remembered  that  he  had  not  found 
the  people  in  the  village  alarming.  He 
remembered  a  conversation  he  had  had  the 
day  before,  with  a  man  and  his  wife,  as  he 
leaned  over  the  gate  that  led  into  their  little 
garden.  On  either  side  of  the  tiled  path 
running  up  to  the  cottage  door  were  broad 
beds  filled  with  a  jumble  of  flowers — pansies, 
lupins,  tulips,  honesty,  sweet-rocket,  and 
bright  fragile  poppies. 

"  Lovely  show  of  flowers  you  have  there," 
he  had  said  tentatively  to  a  woman  in  an 
apron,  who  stood  inside  the  gate  knitting. 

"  It's  like  that  all  the  summer,"  she  replied 
"  my  husband's  very  proud  of  his  garden,  he 
is.  But  we're  under  notice  to  quit."  She 
spoke  with  an  unfamiliar  broad  accent  and 
a  burr,  that  had  prompted  Chase  to  say, 

"  You're  not  from  these  parts  ?  " 

"  No,  sir,  I'm  from  Sussex.  It's  not  a 
wonderful  great  matter  of  distance.  I'm 
wanting  my  man  to  come  back  with  me,  and 


42  THE  HEIR 

settle  near  my  old  home,  but  he  says  he  was 
born  in  Kent  and  in  Kent  he'll  die." 

"  That's  right,"  approved  the  man  who 
had  come  up.  "  I  don't  hold  with  folk 
leaving  their  own  county.  It's  like  sheep — 
take  sheep  away  from  their  own  parts,  and 
they  don't  do  near  so  well.  Oxfordshire 
don't  do  on  Romney  Marsh,  and  Romney 
Marsh  don't  do  in  Oxfordshire."  He  was 
ramming  tobacco  into  his  pipe,  but  broke 
off  to  pull  a  seedling  of  groundsel  out  from 
among  his  pinks.  He  crushed  it  together 
and  put  it  carefully  into  his  pocket.  "  I 
made  this  garden,"  he  resumed,  "  carried 
the  mould  home  on  my  back  evening  after 
evening,  and  sent  the  kids  out  with  bodges 
for  road-scrapings,  till  you  couldn't  beat  my 
soil,  sir,  not  in  this  village,  nor  my  flowers 
either.  But  I'm  under  notice,  and  sotfner 
than  let  them  pass  to  a  stranger  I'll  put  my 
bagginhook  through  the  roots  of  every  plant 
amongst  them,"  he  said,  and  spat. 

"  Twenty-five  years  we've  lived  in  this 
cottage,  and  brought  up  ten  children,"  said 
the  woman. 

"  The  cottage  is  to  come  down,  and  make 
room  for  a  building  site,  so  Mr.  Nutley  told 
us,"  the  man  continued. 


THE  HEIR  43 

"  We'd  papered  and  whitewashed  it  our- 
selves," said  the  woman. 

"  I  laid  them  tiles,  sir,  me  and  my  eldest 
boy,"  said  the  man,  pointing  with  the  stem 
of  his  pipe  down  at  the  path;  "  a  rare  job  it 
was.  There  wasn't  no  garden,  not  when  I 
came  here." 

"  Twenty-five  years  ago,"  said  the  woman. 

They  both  stared  mournfully  at  Chase. 

"  I'm  under  notice  to  quit,  too,  you  know," 
said  Chase,  rather  embarrassed,  as  though  they 
had  brought  a  gentle  reproof  against  him, 
trying  to  excuse  himself  by  this  joke. 

"  I  know  that,  sir  ;  we're  sorry,"  the  man 
had  said  instantly. 

(Sorry.  They  had  never  seen  him  before, 
yet  they  were  sorry.) 

"  Miss  Chase,  your  aunt,  sir,  liked  my 
garden  properly,"  said  the  man.  "  She'd 
stop  here  always,  in  her  pony-chaise,  and 
have  a  look  at  my  flowers.  She'd  say  to  me, 
chaffing-like,  *  You've  a  better  show  than  me, 
Jakes.'  But  she  didn't  like  peonies.  I  had 
a  fine  clump  of  peonies  and  she  made  me  dig 
it  up.  Lord,  she  was  a  tartar — saving  your 
presence,  sir.  But  a  good  heart,  so  nobody 
took  no  notice.  But  peonies — no,  she 
wouldn't  have  peonies  at  any  price." 
D 


44  THE  HEIR 

"  There's  few  folks  in  this  village  ever 
thought  to  see  Blackboys  in  other  hands  than 
Chase's,"  said  the  woman.  "  'Tis  the  pea- 
cocks will  be  grieved — dear!  dear!  " 

"  The  peacocks  ?  "  Chase  had  repeated. 

"  Folks  about  here  do  say,  the  peacocks'll 
die  off  when  Blackboys  goes  from  Chase's 
hands,"  said  the  man.  "  They  be  terrible 
hard  on  a  garden,  though,  do  be  peacocks," 
he  had  said  further,  meticulously  removing 
another  weed  from  among  his  pinks. 


THAT  had  been  an  experience  to  Chase,  a 
milestone  on  his  road.  He  was  to  experience 
much  the  same  sensation  when  his  lands 
received  him.  It  was  a  new  world  to  him — 
new  because  it  was  so  old — ancient  and  sober 
according  to  the  laws  of  nature.  There  was 
here  a  rhythm  which  no  flurry  could  disturb. 
The  seasons  ordained,  and  men  lived  close 
up  against  the  rulings  so  prescribed,  close 
up  against  the  austere  laws,  at  once  the  mas- 
ters and  the  subjects  of  the  land  that  served 
them  and  that  they  as  loyally  served.  Chase 
perceived  his  mistake ;  he  perceived  it  with 
surprise  and  a  certain  reverence.  Because 


THE  HEIR  45 

the  laws  were  unalterable  they  were  not 
necessarily  stagnant.  They  were  of  a  solemn 
order,  not  arbitrarily  framed  or  admitting  of 
variation  according  to  the  caprice  of  mankind. 
In  the  place  of  stagnation,  he  recognized 
stability.  And  as  his  vision  widened  he  saw 
that  the  house  fused  very  graciously  with  the 
trees,  the  meadows,  and  the  hills,  grown  there 
in  place  no  less  than  they,  a  part  of  the  secular 
tradition.  He  reconsidered  even  the  pictures, 
not  as  the  representation  of  meaningless  ghosts, 
but  as  men  and  women  whose  blood  had  gone 
to  the  making  of  that  now  in  his  own  veins. 
It  was  the  land,  the  farms,  the  rickyards, 
the  sown,  the  fallow,  that  taught  him  this 
wisdom.  He  learnt  it  slowly,  and  without 
knowing  that  he  learnt.  He  absorbed  it  in 
the  company  of  men  such  he  had  never  pre- 
viously known,  and  who  treated  him  as  he 
had  never  before  been  treated — not  with 
deference  only,  which  would  have  confused 
him,  but  with  a  paternal  kindliness,  a  quiet 
familiarity,  an  acquaintance  immediately 
linked  by  virtue  of  tradition.  To  them  he, 
the  clerk  of  Wolverhampton,  was,  quite 
simply,  Chase  of  Blackboys.  He  came  to 
value  the  smile  in  their  eyes,  when  they 
looked  at  him,  as  a  caress. 


46  THE   HEIR 


VI 

WHEN  Nutley  came  again,  a  fortnight  after 
the  funeral,  to  his  surprise  he  met  Chase  in 
the  park  with  Thane,  the  greyhound,  at  his 
heels. 

"  Good  gracious,"  he  said,  "  I  thought  you 
were  in  Wolverhampton  ?  " 

"  So  I  was.  I  thought  I'd  come  back  to 
see  how  things  were  going  on.  I  arrived  two 
days  ago." 

"  But  I  saw  Fortune  last  week,  and  he 
never  mentioned  your  coming,"  pursuedlMr. 
Nutley,  mystified. 

"  No,  I  daresay  he  didn't ;  in  point  of  fact, 
he  knew  nothing  about  it  until  I  turned  up 
here." 

What,  you  didn't  let  the  servants  know?" 
No,  I  didn't,"  Chase  entered  suddenly 
upon  a  definite  dislike  of  Mr.  Nutley.  He  felt 
a  relief  as  soon  as  he  had  realized  it ;  he  felt 
more  settled  and  definite  in  his  mind,  cleared 
of  the  cobwebs  of  a  vague  uneasiness.  Nut- 
ley  was  too  inquisitorial,  too  managing  alto- 
gether. Blackboys  was  his  own  to  come  to, 
if  he  chose.  Still  his  own  —  for  another 
month. 


THE  HEIR  47 

"  What  on  earth  have  you  got  there  ?  " 
said  Nutley  peering  at  a  crumpled  bunch  that 
Chase  carried  in  his  hand. 

"  Butcher-boys,"  replied  Chase. 

"  They're  wild  orchids,"  said  Mr.  Nutley, 
after  peering  a  little  closer.  "  Why  do  you 
call  them  butcher-boys  ?  5: 

"  That's  what  the  children  call  them," 
mumbled  Chase,  "  I  don't  know  them  by  any 
other  name.  Ugly  things,  anyhow,"  he 
added,  flinging  them  violently  away. 

"  Soft,  soft,"  said  Nutley  to  himself, 
tapping  his  forehead  as  he  walked  on  alone. 

He  proceeded  towards  the  house.  Queer 
of  Chase,  to  come  back  like  that,  without  a 
word  to  anyone.  What  about  that  business 
of  his  in  Wolverhampton  ?  He  seemed  to  be 
less  anxious  about  that  now.  As  though  he 
couldn't  leave  matters  to  Nutley  and  Fare- 
brother,  Solicitors  and  Estate  Agents,  with- 
out slipping  back  to  see  to  things  himself! 
Spying,  no  less.  Queer,  sly,  silent  fellow, 
mooning  about  the  park,  carrying  wild 
orchids.  "Butcher-boys,"  he  had  called  them. 
What  children  had  he  been  consorting  with, 
to  learn  that  country  name  ?  There  had 
been  an  odd  look  in  his  eye,  too,  when  Nutley 
had  come  upon  him,  as  though  he  were  vexed 


48  THE   HEIR 

at  being  seen,  and  would  have  liked  to  slink 
off  in  the  opposite  direction.  Queer,  too, 
that  he  should  have  made  no  reference  to 
the  approaching  sale.  He  might  at  least  have 
asked  whether  the  estate  office  had  received 
any  private  applications.  But  Nutley  had 
already  noticed  that  he  took  very  little  inter- 
est in  the  subject  of  the  sale.  An  unsatis- 
factory employer,  except  in  so  far  as  he  never 
interfered ;  it  was  unsatisfactory  never  to 
know  whether  one's  employer  approved  of 
what  was  being  done  or  not. 

And  under  his  irritability  was  another 
grievance  :  the  suspicion  that  Chase  was  a 
dark  horse.  The  solicitor  had  always  marked 
down  Blackboys  as  a  ripe  plum  to  fall  into 
his  hands  when  old  Miss  Chase  died — obsti- 
nate, opinionated,  old  Phillida  Chase.  He 
had  never  considered  the  heir  at  all.  It  was 
almost  as  though  he  looked  upon  himself  as 
the  heir — the  impatient  heir,  hostile  and  vin- 
dictive towards  the  coveted  inheritance. 

Nutley  reached  the  house,  where,  his  hand 
upon  the  latch  of  the  little  wooden  gate,  he 
was  checked  by  a  padlock  within  the  hasp. 
He  was  irritated,  and  shook  the  latch  roughly. 
He  thought  that  the  quiet  house,  safe  behind 
its  gate  and  its  sleeping  moat,  smiled  and 


THE  HEIR  49 

mocked  him.  Then,  more  sensibly,  he  pulled 
the  bell  beside  the  gate,  and  waited  till  the 
tinkle  inside  the  house  brought  Fortune 
hurrying  to  open. 

"  What's  this  affair,  eh,  Fortune  ?  "  said 
Nutley  with  false  good-humour,  pointing  to 
the  padlock. 

"  The  padlock,  sir  ?  That's  there  by  Mr. 
Chase's  orders,"  replied  Fortune  demurely. 

"  Mr.  Chase's  orders  ?  "  repeated  Mr.  Nut- 
ley,  not  believing  his  own  ears. 

"Mr.  Chase  has  been  very  much  an- 
noyed, sir,  by  motoring  parties  coming  to 
look  over  the  house,  and  making  free  of  the 
place." 

"  But  they  may  have  been  intending 
purchasers!"  Mr.  Nutley  almost  shrieked, 
touched  upon  the  raw. 

"  Yes,  sir,  they  all  had  orders  to  view. 
All  except  one  party,  that  is,  that  came  yes- 
terday. Mr.  Chase  turned  them  away,  sir." 

"  Turned  them  away  ?  " 

"  Yes,  sir.  They  came  in  a  big  car.  Mr. 
Chase  talked  to  them  himself,  through  the 
gate.  He  had  the  key  in  his  pocket.  No,  sir, 
he  wouldn't  unlock  it.  He  said  that  if  they 
wanted  to  buy  the  house  they  would  have  the 
opportunity  of  doing  so  at  the  auction.  Yes, 


50  THE  HEIR 

sir,  they  seemed  considerably  annoyed.  They 
said  they  had  come  from  London  on  purpose. 
They  said  they  should  have  thought  that  if 
anyone  had  a  house  to  sell,  he  would  have 
been  only  too  glad  to  show  parties  over  it, 
order  or  no  order.  They  said,  especially  if 
the  house  was  so  unsaleable,  two  hours  by 
train  from  London  and  not  up  to  date  in  any 
way.  Mr.  Chase  said,  very  curt-like,  that 
if  they  wanted  an  up-to-date  house,  Black- 
boys  was  not  likely  to  suit  them.  He  just 
lifted  his  cap,  and  wished  them  good-evening, 
and  came  back  by  himself  into  the  house,  with 
the  key  still  in  his  pocket,  and  the  car  drove 
away.  Very  insolent  sort  of  people  they 
were,  sir,  I  must  say." 

Fortune  delivered  himself  of  this  recital 
in  a  tone  that  was  a  strange  compound  of 
respect,  reticence,  and  a  secret  relish.  During 
its  telling  he  had  followed  Mr.  Nutley's 
attentive  progress  into  the  house,  until  they 
arrived  in  the  panelled  library  where  the 
coral-coloured  tulips  reared  themselves  so 
luminously  against  the  sobriety  of  the  books 
and  of  the  oak.  Mr.  Nutley  noticed  them, 
because  it  was  easier  to  pass  a  comment  on  a 
bowl  of  flowers  than  upon  Chase's  inexplic- 
able behaviour. 


THE  HEIR  51 

"  Yes,  sir,  very  pretty ;  Mr.  Chase  puts 
them  there,"  said  Fortune,  with  the  satis- 
faction of  one  who  adds  a  final  touch  to  a 
suggestive  sketch. 

"  Shouldn't  have  thought  he'd  ever  looked 
at  a  flower  in  his  life,"  muttered  Nutley. 

He  deposited  his  bag  on  the  table,  and 
turned  to  the  butler. 

"  Quite  between  you  and  me,  Fortune, 
what  you  tell  me  surprises  me  very  much — 
about  the  visiting  parties,  I  mean.  And 
the  padlock.  Um — the  padlock.  I  always 
thought  Mr.  Chase  very  quiet ;  but  you  don't, 
do  you,  think  him  soft  ?  " 

Fortune  knew  that  Nutley  enjoyed  saying 
that.  He  remembered  how  he  had  caught 
Chase,  the  day  before,  studying  bumbledories 
on  the  low  garden  wall ;  but  he  withheld  the 
bumbledories  from  Mr.  Nutley. 

"  It  wouldn't  be  unnatural,  sir,"  he  sub- 
mitted, "if  .Mr.  Chase  had  a  feeling  about 
Blackboys  being  in  the  market  ?  " 

"  Feeling  ?  pooh!  "  said  Mr.  Nutley:  He 
said  "  Pooh  !  "  again  to  reassure  himself, 
because  he  knew  that  Fortune,  stupid,  senti- 
mental, and  shrewd,  had  hit  the  nail  on  the 
head.  "  He'd  never  set  eyes  on  Blackboys 
until  three  weeks  ago.  Besides,  what  could 


52  THE  HEIR 

he  do  with  the  place  except  put  it  in  the  mar- 
ket ?  Tell  me  that?  Absurd!" 

He  was  sorting  papers  out  of  his  black  bag. 
Their  neat  stiffness  gave  him  the  reassuring 
sense  of  being  here  among  matters  which 
he  competently  understood.  This  was  his 
province.  He  would  have  said,  had  he 
been  asked  a  day  earlier,  that  it  was 
Chase's  province  too.  Now  he  was  not  so 
sure. 

"  Sentimentality! '!  he  snorted.  It  was 
his  most  damning  criticism. 

Chase's  pip&^as  lying  on  the  table  beside 
the  tulips  ;  he  picked  it  up  and  regarded  it 
with  a  mixture  of  reproach  and  indignation. 
It  reposed  mutely  in  his  hand. 

"Ridiculous!"  said  Nutley,  dashing  it 
down  again  as  though  that  settled  the  matter. 

"  The  people  round  here  have  taken  to 
him  wonderful,"  put  in  Fortune. 

Nutley  looked  sharply  at  him ;  he  stood 
by  the  table,  demure,  grizzled,  and  perfectly 
respectful. 

"  Why,  has  he  been  round  talking  to  the 
people  ?  " 

"  A  good  deal,  sir,  among  the  tenants  like. 
Wonderful  how  he  gets  on  with  them,  for  a 
city-bred  man.  I  don't  hold  with  city- 


THE  HEIR  53 

breeding,  myself.  Will  you  be  staying  to 
luncheon,  sir  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  replied  Mr.  Nutley,  pre-occupied 
and  profoundly  suspicious. 

VII 

SUSPICIOUS  of  Chase,  though  he  couldn't 
justify  his  suspicion.  Tested  even  by  the 
severity  of  the  solicitor's  standards,  Chase's 
behaviour  and  conversation  during  luncheon 
were  irreproachable.  No  sooner  had  he 
entered  the  house  than  he  began  briskly 
talking  of  business.  Yet  Nutley  continued 
to  eye  him  as  one  who  beneath  reasonable 
words  and  a  bland  demeanour  nourishes  a 
secret  and  a  joke  ;  a  silent  and  deeply-buried 
understanding.  He  talked  sedately  enough, 
keeping  to  the  subject  even  with  a  certain 
rigour — acreage,  rents,  building  possibilities  ; 
an  intelligent  interest.  Still,  Nutley  could 
have  sworn  there  was  irony  in  it.  Irony 
from  Chase  ?  Weedy,  irritable  little  man, 
Chase.  Not  to-day,  though ;  not  irritable 
to-day.  In  a  good  temper.  (Ironical  ?) 
Playing  the  host,  sitting  at  the  head  of  the 
refectory-table  while  Nutley  sat  at  the  side. 
Naturally.  Very  cordial,  very  open-handed 


54  THE  HEIR 

with  the  port.  Quite  at  home  in  the  dining- 
room,  ordering  his  dog  to  a  corner  ;  and  in 
the  library  too,  with  his  pipes  and  tobacco 
strewn  about.  How  long  ago  was  it,  since 
Nutley  was  warning  him  not  to  slip  on  the 
polished  boards  ? 

Then  a  stroll  round  the  garden,  Chase  with 
crumbs  in  his  pocket  for  the  peacocks.  When 
they  saw  him,  two  or  three  hopped  majesti- 
cally down  from  the  parapet,  and  came 
stalking  towards  him.  Accustomed  to  crumbs 
evidently.  "  You  haven't  had  them  des- 
troyed, then?  "  said  Nutley,  eyeing  them  with 
mistrust  and  disapproval,  and  Chase  laughed 
without  answering.  Up  the  centre  walk  of 
the  garden,  and  back  by  the  herbaceous 
borders  along  the  walls :  lilac,  wistaria, 
patches  of  tulips,  colonies  of  iris.  All  the 
while  Chase  never  deviated  from  the  topic  of 
selling.  He  pointed  out  the  house,  folded  in 
the  hollow  down  the  gentle  slope  of  the 
garden.  "  Not  bad,  for  those  who  like  it. 
Thirty  thousand  for  the  house,  I  think  you 
said?"  "Then  why  the  devil,"  Nutley 
wanted  to  say,  but  refrained  from  saying, 
"  do  you  turn  away  people  who  come  in  a 
big  car  ?  >!  They  strolled  down  the  slope, 
Chase  breaking  from  the  lilac  bushes  an  arm- 


THE  HEIR  55 

ful  of  the  heavy  plumes.  He  seemed  to  do  it 
with  an  unknowing  gesture,  as  though  he 
couldn't  keep  his  hands  off  flowers,  and  then 
to  be  embarrassed  on  discovering  in  his  arms 
the  wealth  that  he  had  gathered.  It  was  as 
though  he  had  kept  an  adequate  guard  over 
his  tongue  while  allowing  his  gestures  to 
escape  him.  He  took  Nutley  round  to  the 
entrance,  where  the  station  cab  was  waiting, 
and  unlocked  the  gate  with  the  key  he  carried 
in  his  pocket. 

"  You  go  back  to  Wolverhampton  to- 
morrow ? "  said  Mr.  Nutley,  preparing  to 
depart. 

"  That's  it,"  replied  Chase.  Did  he  look 
sly,  or  didn't  he  ? 

"  All  the  arrangements  will  be  made  by  the 
end  of  next  week,"  said  Nutley  severely. 

"  That's  splendid  !  "  replied  Chase. 

Nutley,  as  he  was  driven  away,  had  a  last 
glimpse  of  him,  leaning  still  against  the  gate- 
post, vaguely  holding  the  lilac. 

VIII 

CHASE  didn't  go  back  to  Wolverhampton. 
He  knew  that  it  was  his  duty  to  go,  but  he 
stayed  on  at  Blackboys.  Not  only  that,  but 


56  THE  HEIR 

he  sent  no  letter  or  telegram  in  explanation 
of  his  continued  absence.  He  simply  stayed 
where  he  was,  callous,  and  supremely  happy. 
By  no  logic  could  he  have  justified  his  be- 
haviour ;  by  no  effort  of  the  imagination 
could  he,  a  fortnight  earlier,  have  conceived 
such  behaviour  as  proceeding  from  his  well- 
ordered  creeds.  He  stayed  on,  through  the 
early  summer  days  that  throughout  all  their 
hours  preserved  the  clarity  of  dawn.  Like  a 
child  strayed  into  the  realms  of  delight,  he 
was  stupefied  by  the  enchantment  of  sun  and 
shadow.  He  remained  for  hours  gazing  in  a 
silly  beatitude  at  the  large  patches  of  sun- 
light that  lay  on  the  grass,  at  the  depths  of 
the  shadows  that  melted  into  the  profundity 
of  the  woods.  In  the  mornings  he  woke 
early,  and  leaning  at  the  open  window  gave 
himself  over  to  the  dews,  to  the  young  glint- 
ing sunshine,  and  to  the  birds.  What  a 
babble  of  birds!  He  couldn't  distinguish 
their  notes — only  to  the  cuckoo,  the  wood- 
pigeon,  and  the  distant  crow  of  a  cock  could  he 
put  a  name.  The  fluffy  tits,  blue  and  yellow, 
hopping  among  the  apple-branches,  were  to 
him  as  nameless  as  they  were  lovely.  He 
knew,  theoretically,  that  the  birds  did  sing 
when  day  was  breaking ;  the  marvellous 


THE  HEIR  57 

thing  was,  not  that  they  should  be  singing, 
but  that  he,  Chase,  should  be  awake  and  in 
the  country  to  hear  them  sing.  No  one  knew 
that  he  was  awake,  and  he  had  all  a  shy  man's 
pleasure  in  seclusion.  No  one  knew  what  he 
was  doing ;  no  one  was  spying  on  him  ;  he 
was  quite  free  and  unobserved  in  this  clean- 
washed,  untenanted,  waking  world.  Down 
in  the  woods  only  the  small  animals  and  the 
birds  were  stirring.  There  was  the  rustle  of 
a  mouse  under  dead  leaves.  It  was  too  early 
for  even  the  farm-people  to  be  about. 
Chase  and  the  natural  citizens  between  them 
had  it  all  their  own  way.  (Nutley  wore  a 
black  coat  and  carried  a  black  shiny  bag,  but 
Nutley  knew  nothing  of  the  dawn.)  Then 
he  clothed  himself,  and,  passing  out  of  the 
house  unperceived  with  Thane,  since  there 
was  no  one  to  perceive  them,  wandered  in 
the  sparkling  fields.  There  was  by  now  no 
angle  from  which  he  was  not  familiar  with 
the  house,  whether  he  considered  the  dreamy 
roofs  from  the  crest  of  the  hill  or  the  huddle 
of  the  murrey-coloured  buildings  from  across 
the  distance  of  the  surrounding  pastures.  No 
thread  of  smoke  rose  slim  and  wavering  from 
a  chimney  but  he  could  trace  it  down  to  its 
hearthstone.  No  window  glittered  but  he 


58  THE  HEIR 

could  name  the  room  it  lit.  Nor  was  there 
any  tenderness  of  light  whose  change  he  had 
not  observed,  whether  of  the  morning,  cool 
and  fluty  ;  or  of  the  richer  evening,  profound 
and  venerable,  that  sank  upon  the  ruby 
brick-work,  the  glaucous  moat,  and  the 
breasts  of  the  peacocks  in  the  garden  ;  or  of 
the  ethereal  moonlight,  a  secret  that  he  kept, 
inviolate  almost  from  himself,  in  the  shyest 
recesses  of  his  soul. 

For  at  the  centre  of  all  was  always  the 
house,  that  mothered  the  farms  and  accepted 
the  homage  of  the  garden.  The  house  was 
at  the  heart  of  all  things  ;  the  cycle  of  hus- 
bandry might  revolve — tillage  to  growth, 
and  growth  to  harvest  —  more  necessary, 
more  permanent,  perhaps,  more  urgent ;  but 
like  a  woman  gracious,  humorous,  and  domi- 
nant, the  house  remained  quiet  at  the  centre. 
To  part  the  house  and  the  lands,  or  to  con- 
sider them  as  separate,  would  be  no  less  than 
parting  the  soul  and  the  body.  The  house 
was  the  soul ;  did  contain  and  guard  the 
soul  as  in  a  casket ;  the  lands  were  England, 
Saxon  as  they  could  be,  and  if  the  house 
were  at  the  heart  of  the  land,  then  the  soul 
of  the  house  must  indeed  be  at  the  heart  and 
root  of  England,  and,  onee  arrived  at  the 


THE  HEIR  59 

soul  of  the  house,  you  might  fairly  claim  to 
have  pierced  to  the  soul  of  England.  Grave, 
gentle,  encrusted  with  tradition,  embossed 
with  legend,  simple  and  proud,  ample  and 
maternal.  Not  sensational.  Not  arresting. 
There  was  nothing  about  the  house  or  the 
country  to  startle  ;  it  was,  rather,  a  charm 
that  enticed,  insidious  as  a  track  through  a 
wood,  or  a  path  lying  across  fields  and  curv- 
ing away  from  sight  over  the  skyline,  leading 
the  unwary  wanderer  deeper  and  deeper  into 
the  bosom  of  the  country. 

He  knew  the  sharp  smell  of  cut  grass,  and 
the  wash  of  the  dew  round  his  ankles.  He 
knew  the  honing  of  a  scythe,  the  clang  of  a 
forge  and  the  roaring  of  its  bellows,  the  rasp 
of  a  saw  cutting  through  wood  and  the  resin- 
ous scent  of  the  sawdust.  He  knew  the  tap 
of  a  woodpecker  on  a  tree-trunk,  and  the 
midday  murmur,  most  amorous,  most  sleepy, 
of  the  pigeons  among  the  beeches.  He  knew 
the  contented  buzz  of  a  bee  as  it  closed  down 
upon  a  flower,  and  the  bitter  shrill  of  the 
grasshopper  along  the  hedgerows.  He  knew 
the  squirt  of  milk  jetting  into  the  pails,  and 
the  drowsy  stir  in  the  byres.  He  knew  the 
marvellous  brilliance  of  a  petal  in  the  sun, 
its  fibrous  transparency,  like  the  cornelian- 


60  THE  HEIR 

coloured  transparency  of  a  woman's  fingers 
held  over  a  strong  light.  He  associated  these 
sights,  and  the  infinitesimal  small  sounds 
composing  the  recurrent  melody,  with  the 
meals  prepared  for  him,  the  salads  and  cold 
chicken,  the  draughts  of  cider,  and  abund- 
ance of  fresh  humble  fruit,  until  it  seemed  to 
him  that  all  senses  were  gratified  severally 
and  harmoniously,  as  well  out  in  the  open  as 
in  the  cool  dusk  within  the  house. 

He  liked  to  rap  with  his  stick  upon  the 
door  of  a  farm-house,  and  to  be  admitted 
with  a  "  Why  !  Mr.  Chase  !  "  by  a  smiling 
woman  into  the  passage,  smelling  of  recent 
soap  and  water  on  the  tiles  ;  to  be  ushered 
into  the  sitting-room,  hideous,  pretentious, 
and  strangely  meaningless,  furnished  always 
with  the  cottage-piano,  the  Turkey  carpet, 
and  the  plant  in  a  bright  gilt  basket-pot. 
The  light  in  these  rooms  always  struck  Chase 
as  being  particularly  unmerciful.  But  he 
learnt  that  he  must  sit  patient,  while  the 
farmer  was  summoned,  and  the  rest  of  the 
household  too,  and  sherry  in  a  decanter  and 
a  couple  of  glasses  were  produced  from  a 
sideboard,  at  whatever  hour  Chase's  visit 
might  chance  to  fall,  be  it  even  at  eight  in  the 
morning,  which  it  very  often  was,  That  lusty 


THE   HEIR  61 

hospitality  permitted  no  refusal  of  the  sherry, 
though  Chase  might  have  preferred,  instead 
of  the  burning  stuff,  a  glass  of  fresh  milk 
after  his  walk  across  the  dews.  He  must  sit 
and  sip  the  sherry,  responding  to  the  social 
efforts  of  the  farmer's  wife  and  daughters 
(the  latter  always  coy,  always  would  be 
up-to-date),  while  the  farmer  was  content  to 
leave  this  indoor  portion  of  the  entertainment 
to  his  womenfolk,  contributing  nothing  him- 
self but  "  Another  glass,  Mr.  Chase  ?  "  or 
the  offer  of  a  cigar,  and  the  creak  of  his 
leather  gaiters  as  he  trod  across  the  room. 
But  presently,  Chase  knew,  when  the  conver- 
sation became  really  impossibly  stilted,  he 
might  without  incivility  suggest  that  he 
mustn't  keep  the  farmer  any  longer  from  his 
daily  business,  and,  after  shaking  hands  all 
round  with  the  ladies,  might  take  his  cap  and 
follow  his  host  out  into  the  yard,  where  men 
pitchforked  the  sodden  litter  out  into  the 
midden  in  the  centre  of  the  yard,  and  the 
slow  cattle  lurched  one  behind  the  other  from 
the  sheds,  turning  themselves  unprompted 
in  the  familiar  direction.  Here,  Chase  might 
be  certain  he  would  not  be  embarrassed  by 
having  undue  notice  taken  of  him.  The 
farmer  here  was  a  greater  man  than  he. 


62  THE  HEIR 

Chase  liked  to  follow  round  meekly,  and  the 
more  he  was  neglected  the  better  he  was 
pleased.  Then  he  and  the  farmer  together 
would  tramp  across  the  acres,  silent  for  the 
most  part,  but  inwardly  contented,  although 
when  the  farmer  broke  the  silence  it  was  only 
to  grunt  out  some  phrase  of  complaint, 
either  at  the  poverty  of  that  year's  yield, 
or  the  dearth  or  abundance  of  rabbits,  or 
to  remark,  kicking  at  a  clod  of  loam,  "  Soggy! 
soggy !  the  land's  not  yet  forgotten  the  rains 
we  had  in  February,"  thus  endowing  the 
land  with  a  personality  actual  and  rancor- 
ous, more  definite  to  Chase  than  the  person- 
alities of  the  yeomen,  whom  he  could  distin- 
guish apart  by  their  appearance  perhaps,  but 
certainly  not  by  their  opinions,  their  pre- 
occupations, or  their  gestures.  They  were 
natural  features  rather  than  men — trees 
or  boles,  endowed  with  speech  and  movement 
indeed,  but  preserving  the  same  unity,  the 
same  hodden  unwieldiness,  that  was  integral 
with  the  landscape.  There  was  one  old 
hedger  in  particular  who,  maundering  over 
his  business  of  lop  and  top,  or  grubbing  among 
the  ditches,  had  grown  as  gnarled  and  horny 
as  an  ancient  root,  and  was  scarcely  distin- 
guishable till  you  came  right  upon  him,  when 


THE   HEIR  63 

his  little  brown  dog  flew  out  from  the  hedge 
and  barked  ;  and  there  was  another  chubby 
old  man,  a  dealer  in  fruit,  who  drove  about 
the  country,  a  long  ladder  swaying  out  of  the 
back  of  his  cart.  This  old  man  was  intimate 
with  every  orchard  of  the  country-side, 
whether  apple,  cherry,  damson,  or  plum, 
and  could  tell  you  the  harvest  gathered  in 
bushel  measures  for  any  year  within  his 
memory  ;  but  although  all  fruits  came  within 
his  province,  the  apples  had  his  especial  affec- 
tion, and  he  never  referred  to  them  save  by 
the  personal  pronouns,  "  Ah,  Winter  Queen- 
ing," he  would  say,  "  she's  a  grand  bearer," 
or  "  King  of  the  Pippins,  he's  a  fine  fellow," 
and  for  Chase,  whom  he  had  taken  under  his 
protection,  he  would  always  produce  some 
choice  specimen  from  his  pocket  with  a  con- 
fidential air,  although,  as  he  never  failed  to 
observe,  "May  wasn't  the  time  for  apples." 
Let  Mr.  Chase  only  wait  till  the  autumn — 
he  would  show  him  what  a  Ribston  or  a 
Blenheim  ought  to  be ;  "  But  I  shan't  be 
here  in  the  autumn,  Caleb,"  Chase  would 
say,  and  the  old  man  would  jerk  his  head 
sagely  and  reply  as  he  whipped  up  the  pony, 
"  Trees  with  old  roots  isn't  so  easily  thrown 
over,"  and  in  the  parable  that  he  only  half 


64  THE  HEIR 

understood  Chase  found  an  obscure  comfort. 

These  were  his  lane-made  friendships.  He 
knew  the  man  who  cut  withes  by  the  brook  ; 
he  knew  the  gang  and  the  six  great  shining 
horses  that  dragged  away  the  chained  and 
fallen  trees  upon  an  enormous  wain ;  he 
knew  the  boys  who  went  after  moorhen's 
eggs  ;  he  knew  the  kingfisher  that  was  always 
ambushed  somewhere  near  the  bridge ;  he 
knew  the  cheery  woman  who  had  an  idiot 
child,  and  a  husband  accursed  of  bees. 
"  Bees  ?  no,  my  husband  couldn't  never  go 
near  bees.  He  squashed  up  too  many  of 
them  when  he  was  a  lad,  and  bees  never  for- 
get. Squashed  'em  up,  so,  in  his  hand.  Just 
temper.  Now  if  three  bees  stung  him  to- 
gether he'd  die.  Oh,  surely,  Mr.  Chase,  sir. 
We  went  down  into  Sussex  once,  on  a  holiday, 
and  the  bees  there  knew  him  at  once  and 
were  after  him.  Wonderful  thing  it  is,  the 
sense  beasts  have  got.  And  memory!  Beasts 
never  forget,  beasts  don't." 

And  always  there  was  the  reference  to  the 
sale,  and  the  regrets,  that  were  never  imper- 
tinent and  never  ruffled  so  much  as  the 
fringes  of  Chase's  pride.  The  women  were 
readier  with  these  regrets  than  the  men ; 
they  started  off  with  unthinking  sympathy, 


THE  HEIR  65 

while  the  men  shuffled  and  coughed,  and 
traced  with  their  toe  the  pattern  of  the  car- 
pet, but  presently,  when  alone  with  Chase, 
took  advantage  of  the  women's  prerogative 
in  breaking  the  ice,  to  revive  the  subject ; 
and  always  Chase,  to  get  himself  out  of  a 
conversation  which  he  felt  to  be  fraught  with 
awkwardness — the  awkwardness  of  reserved 
men  trespassing  upon  the  grounds  of  secret 
and  personal  feeling — would  parry  with  his 
piteous  jest  of  being  himself  under  notice  to 
quit. 

IX 

WHEN  the  inventory  men  came,  Chase  suf- 
fered. They  came  with  bags,  ledgers,  pen- 
cils ;  they  were  brisk  and  efficient,  and  Chase 
fled  them  from  room  to  room.  They  soon 
put  him  down  as  oddly  peevish,  not  knowing 
that  they  had  committed  the  extreme  offence 
of  disturbing  his  dear  privacy.  In  their 
eyes,  after  all,  they  were  there  as  his  em- 
ployees, carrying  out  his  orders.  The  fore- 
man even  went  out  of  his  way  to  be  apprecia- 
tive, "  Nice  lot  of  stuff  you  have  there,  sir," 
he  said  to  Chase,  when  his  glance  first 
travelled  over  the  dim  velvets  and  gilt  of  the 


66  THE  HEIR 

furniture  in  the  Long  Gallery  ;  "  should  do 
well  under  the  hammer."  Chase  stood  be- 
side him,  seeing  the  upholstered  depths  of 
velvets  and  damasks,  like  ripe  fruits,  heavily 
fringed  and  tasselled ;  the  plaster- work  of  the 
diapered  ceiling  ;  the  fairy-tale  background 
of  the  tapestry,  and  the  reflections  of  the 
cloudy  mirrors.  Into  this  room  also  he  had 
put  bowls  of  flowers,  not  knowing  that  the 
inventory  men  were  coming  so  soon.  "  Nice 
lot  of  stuff  you  have  here,  sir,"  said  the 
foreman. 

Chase  remembered  how  often,  representing 
his  insurance  company,  he  had  run  a  casual 
and  assessing  eye  over  other  people's  posses- 
sions. 

The  inventory  men  worked  methodically 
through  the  house.  Ground  floor,  staircase, 
landing,  passage,  first  floor.  Everything  was 
ticketed  and  checked.  Chase  miserably 
avoided  their  hearty  communicativeness.  He 
skulked  in  the  sitting-room  downstairs,  or, 
when  he  was  driven  out  of  that,  took  his  cap 
and  walked  away  from  the  house  that  sur- 
rounded him  now  with  the  grief  of  a  wistful 
reproach.  He  knew  that  he  would  be  well- 
advised  to  leave,  yet  he  delayed  from  day  to 
day ;  he  suffered,  but  he  stayed  on,  impo- 


THE  HEIR  67 

tently  watching  the  humbling  and  the  dese- 
cration of  the  house.  Then  he  took  to  going 
amongst  the  men  when  they  were  at  their 
work,  "  What  might  be  the  value  of  a  thing 
like  this  ?  "  he  would  ask,  tapping  picture, 
cabinet,  or  chair  with  a  contemptuous  finger  ; 
and,  when  told,  he  would  express  surprise 
that  anyone  could  be  fool  enough  to  pay  such 
a  price  for  an  object  so  unserviceable,  worm- 
eaten,  or  insecure.  He  would  stand  by, 
derisively  sucking  the  top  of  his  cane,  while 
clerk  and  foreman  checked  and  inscribed. 
Sometimes  he  would  pick  up  some  object  just 
entered,  a  blue  porcelain  bowl,  or  whatever 
it  might  be,  turn  it  over  between  his  hands, 
examine  it,  and  set  it  back  on  the  window 
ledge  with  a  shrug  of  the  shoulders.  There 
were  no  flowers  in  the  rooms  now,  nor  did  he 
leave  his  pipes  and  tobacco  littering  the  tables, 
but  kept  them  hidden  away  in  a  drawer. 
There  had  been  places,  intimate  to  him, 
where  he  had  grown  accustomed  to  put  his 
things,  knowing  he  would  find  them  there  on 
his  return  ;  but  he  now  broke  himself  of  this 
weakness  with  a  wrench.  It  hurt,  and  he 
was  grim  about  it.  In  the  evenings  he  sat 
solitary  in  a  stiff  room,  without  the  compan- 
ionship of  those  familiar  things  in  their 


68  THE  HEIR 

familiar  niches.  Towards  Fortune  his  man- 
ner changed,  and  he  appeared  to  take  a 
pleasure  in  speaking  callously,  even  harshly, 
of  the  forthcoming  sale  ;  but  the  old  servant 
saw  through  him.  When  people  came  now 
to  visit  the  house,  he  took  them  over  every 
corner  of  it  himself,  deploring  its  lack  of 
convenience,  pointing  out  the  easy  reme- 
dy, and  vaunting  the  advantage  of  its  archi- 
tectural perfection,  "  Quoted  in  every  book 
on  the  subject,"  he  would  say,  "  a  perfect 
specimen  of  domestic  Elizabethan "  (this 
phrase  he  had  picked  up  from  an  article  in 
an  architectural  journal),  "  complete  in  every 
detail,  down  to  the  window-fastenings  ;  you 
wouldn't  find  another  like  it,  in  the  length 
and  breadth  of  England."  The  people  to 
whom  he  said  these  things  looked  at  him 
curiously  ;  he  spoke  in  a  shrill,  eager  voice, 
and  they  thought  he  must  be  very  anxious 
to  sell.  "  Hard-up,  no  doubt,"  they  said  as 
they  went  away.  Others  said,  "  He  probably 
belongs  to  a  distant  branch  of  the  family,  and 
doesn't  care." 


THE  HEIR  69 


X 

AFTER  the  inventory  men,  the  dealers.  Cigars, 
paunches,  check- waistcoats,  signet-rings.  In- 
solent plump  hands  thumbing  the  velvets  ; 
shiny  lips  pushed  out  in  disparagement,  while 
small  eyes  twinkled  with  concupiscence. 
Chase  grew  to  know  them  well.  Yet  he 
taught  himself  to  banter  even  with  the  dealers, 
to  pretend  his  excessive  boredom  with  the 
whole  uncongenial  business.  He  advertised 
his  contempt  for  the  possessions  that  circum- 
stances had  thrust  on  him ;  they  could  and 
should,  he  let  it  be  understood,  affect  him 
solely  through  their  marketable  value.  The 
house  itself — he  quoted  Nutley,  to  the  dealers 
not  to  the  people  who  came  to  view — "  Small 
rooms,  dark  passages,  no  bath-rooms,  no 
electric  light."  He  said  these  things  often 
and  loudly,  and  laughed  after  he  had  said 
them  as  though  he  had  uttered  a  witticism. 
The  dealers  laughed  with  him,  politely,  but 
they  thought  him  a  little  wild,  and  from  time 
to  time  cast  at  him  a  glance  of  slight  surprise. 

All  this  while  he  sent  no  letter  to  Wolver- 
hampton. 

He  got  one  letter  from  his  office,  a  type- 


70  THE  HEIR 

written  letter,  considerate  and  long-suffering, 
addressed  to  P.  Chase,  Esq.,  at  the  foot  (he 
was  accustomed  to  seeing  himself  referred  to 
as  "  our  Mr.  Chase  "  by  his  firm — anyhow 
they  hadn't  ferreted  out  the  Peregrine),  sug- 
gesting that,  although  they  quite  understood 
that  private  affairs  of  importance  were  de- 
taining him,  he  might  perhaps  for  their 
guidance  indicate  an  approximate  date  for  his 
return.  He  reflected  vaguely  that  they  were 
treating  him  very  decently  ;  and  dropped  the 
letter  into  the  wastepaper  basket. 


XI 

HE  saw,  however,  that  he  would  soon  have  to 
go.  He  clung  on,  but  the  sale  was  imminent ; 
red  and  black  posters  appeared  on  all  the 
cottages  ;  and  larger,  redder,  and  blacker 
posters  announced  the  sale,  "By  order  of 
Peregrine  Chase,  Esq.,"  of  "  the  unique  col- 
lection of  antique  furniture,  tapestries,  pic- 
tures, and  contents  of  the  mansion,"  and  in 
types  of  varying  size  detailed  these  contents, 
so  that  Chase  could  see,  flaunting  upon  walls, 
trees,  and  gate-posts,  when  he  wandered  out, 
the  soulless  dates  and  the  auctioneer's  bom- 


THE  HEIR  71 

bast  that  advertised  for  others  the  quality  of 
his  possessions. 

An  illustrated  booklet  was  likewise  pub- 
lished. Nutley  gave  him  a  copy.  "  This 
quite  unique  sixteenth  century  residence"; 
"  the  original  panelling  and  plasterwork  "  ; 
"  the  moat  and  contemporary  outbuildings" ; 
"  the  old-world  garden  " — Chase  fluttered 
over  the  pages,  and  rage  seized  him  by  the 
throat.  "  Nicely  got  up,  don't  you  think  ?  " 
Nutley  said  complacently. 

Chase  took  the  booklet  away  with  him, 
up  into  the  gallery.  He  always  liked  the 
gallery,  because  it  was  long,  low,  deserted, 
and  so  glowingly  ornate  ;  and  more  peaceful 
than  any  of  the  other  rooms  in  the  whole 
peaceful  house.  When  he  went  there  with 
the  booklet  in  his  hand  that  evening,  he  sat 
quite  still  for  a  time  while  the  hush  that  his 
entrance  had  disturbed  settled  down  again 
upon  the  room  and  its  motionless  occupant. 
A  latticed  rectangle  of  deep  gold  lay  across 
the  boards,  the  last  sunlight  of  the  day. 
Chase  turned  over  the  leaves  of  the  book. 
"  The  Oak  Parlour,  an  apartment  20  ft.  by 
25  ft.,  partially  panelled  in  linen-fold  in  a 
state  of  the  finest  preservation,"  was  that  his 
library  ?  it  couldn't  be,  so  accurate,  so 


72  THE  HEIR 

precise  ?  Why,  the  room  was  living !  through 
the  windows  one  saw  up  the  garden,  and  saw 
the  peacocks  perched  on  the  low  wall,  one 
heard  their  cry  as  they  flew  up  into  the  cedars 
for  the  night ;  and  in  the  evening,  in  that 
room,  the  fir-cones  crackled  on  the  hearth, 
the  dry  wood  kindled,  and  the  room  began  to 
smell  ever  so  slightly  of  the  clean,  acrid  wood- 
smoke  that  never  quite  left  it,  but  remained 
clinging  even  when  the  next  day  the  windows 
were  open  and  the  warm  breeze  fanned  into 
the  room.  He  had  known  all  that  about  it, 
although  he  hadn't  known  it  was  twenty  foot 
by  twenty-five.  He  hadn't  known  that  the 
panelling  against  which  he  had  been  accus- 
tomed to  set  his  bowl  of  coral  tulips  was 
called  linen-fold. 

He  was  an  ignorant  fellow ;  he  hadn't 
known  ;  he  didn't  know  anything  even  now  ; 
the  sooner  he  went  back  to  Wolverhampton 
the  better. 

He  turned  over  another  page  of  the  booklet. 
"  The  Great  Staircase  and  Armorial  Window, 
(cir.  1584)  with  coats-of-arms  of  the  families 
of  Chase,  Dacre,  Medlicott,  and  Cullinbroke," 
— the  window  whose  gaudiness  always  seemed 
to  attract  a  peacock  to  parade  in  rivalry  on 
the  outer  ledge,  like  the  first  day  he  had  come 


THE  HEIR  73 

to  Blackboys ;  but  why  had  they  given  every- 
thing such  high-sounding  names  ?  the  "  Great 
Staircase,"  for  instance  ;  it  was  never  called 
that,  but  only  "  the  staircase,"  nor  was  it 
particularly  great,  only  wide  and  polished  and 
leisurely.  He  supposed  Nutley  was  respon- 
sible, or  was  it  Farebrother  ?  Farebrother 
who  was  so  kindly,  and  might  have  wanted 
to  salve  Chase's  feelings  by  appealing  to 
his  vanity  through  the  splendour  of  his 
property  ? 

What  a  fool  he  was ;  of  course,  neither 
Nutley  nor  Farebrother  gave  a  thought  to  his 
feelings,  but  only  to  the  expediency  of  selling 
the  house. 

He  turned  the  pages  further.  "  The  Long 
Gallery," — here,  at  least,  they  had  not  tried 
to  improve  upon  the  usual  name — "  a  spa- 
cious apartment  running  the  whole  length  of 
the  upper  floor,  100  ft.  by  30  ft.  wide,  sump- 
tuously ornamented  in  the  Italian  style  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  with  mullioned  heraldic 
windows,  overmantel  of  sculptured  marble, 
rich  plastered  ceiling,"  here  he  raised  his  eyes 
and  let  them  stray  down  the  length  of  the 
gallery  ;  the  rectangle  of  sunlight  had  grown 
deeper  and  more  luminous  ;  the  blocks  of 
shadow  in  the  corners  had  spread,  the  velvet 


74  THE  HEIR 

chairs  against  the  tapestry  had  merged  and 
become  yet  more  fruity ;  they  were  like  split 
figs,  like  plums,  like  ripe  mulberries ;  the 
colour  of  the  room  was  as  luxuriant  as  the 
spilling  out  of  a  cornucopia. 

Chase  became  aware  that  Fortune  was 
standing  beside  him. 

"  Mr.  Nutley  asked  me  to  tell  you,  sir, 
that  he  couldn't  wait  any  longer,  but  that 
he'll  be  here  again  to-morrow." 

Chase  blushed  and  stammered,  as  he 
always  did  when  someone  took  him  by  sur- 
prise, and  as  he  more  particularly  did  when 
that  someone  happened  to  be  one  of  his  own 
servants.  Then  he  saw  tears  standing  in  the 
old  butler's  eyes.  He  thought  angrily  to 
himself  that  the  man  was  as  soft-hearted  as 
an  old  woman. 

"Seen  this  little  book,  Fortune?"  he 
inquired,  holding  it  out  towards  him. 

"  Oh,  sir!"  exclaimed  the  butler,  turning 
aside. 

"Well,  what's  the  matter?  what's  the 
matter  ?  "  said  Chase,  in  his  most  irritable 
tone. 

He  got  up  and  moved  away.  He  went  out 
into  the  garden,  troubled  and  disquieted  by 
the  excessive  tumult  in  his  soul.  He  gazed 


THE   HEIR  75 

down  upon  the  mellow  roofs  and  chimneys, 
veiled  in  a  haze  of  blue  smoke  ;  upon  all  the 
beauty  that  had  given  him  peace  and  con- 
tent ;  but  far  from  deriving  comfort  now  he 
felt  himself  provoked  by  a  fresh  anguish, 
impotent  and  yet  rebellious,  a  weak  fury,  an 
irresolute  insubordination.  Schemes,  that 
his  practical  sense  told  him  were  fantastically 
futile,  kept  dashing  across  his  mind.  He 
would  tell  Fortune  to  shut  the  door  in  every- 
body's face,  more  especially  Nutley's.  He 
would  destroy  the  bridge  across  the  moat. 
He  would  sulk  inside  his  house,  admitting  no 
one ;  he  and  his  house,  alone,  allied  against 
rapacity.  Fortune  and  the  few  other  ser- 
vants might  desert  him  if  they  chose ;  he 
would  cook  for  himself,  he  would  dust,  he 
would  think  it  an  honour  to  dust ;  and 
suddenly  the  contrast  between  the  picture 
of  himself  with  a  duster  in  his  hand,  and  of 
himself  striking  at  the  bridge  with  a  pickaxe, 
caused  him  to  laugh  out  loud,  a  laugh  bitter 
and  tormented,  that  could  never  have  issued 
from  his  throat  in  the  Wolverhampton  days. 
He  wished  that  he  were  back  in  those  days, 
again  the  conscientious  drudge,  earning 
enough  to  keep  himself  in  decent  lodgings 
(not  among  brocades  and  fringes,  or  plumed 


76  THE  HEIR 

and  canopied  beds !  not  in  the  midst  of  this 
midsummer  loveliness,  that  laid  hands  more 
gentle  and  more  detaining  than  the  hands  of 
any  woman  about  his  heart!  not  this  old 
dignity  that  touched  his  pride!),  and  he 
stared  down  upon  the  roofs  of  the  house 
lying  cupped  in  its  hollow,  resentful  of  the 
vision  that  had  thus  opened  out  as  though 
by  treachery  at  a  turning  of  his  drab  exist- 
ence, yet  unable  to  sustain  a  truly  resentful 
or  angry  thought,  by  reason  of  the  tenderness 
that  melted  him,  and  the  mute  plea  of  his 
inheritance,  that,  scorning  any  device  more 
theatrical,  quietly  relied  upon  its  simple 
beauty  as  its  only  mediator. 

XII 

MR.  NUTLEY  was  considerably  relieved  when 
he  heard  that  Chase  had  gone  back  to  Wol- 
verhampton.  From  being  negligible,  Chase 
had  lately  become  a  slightly  inconvenient 
presence  at  Blackboys ;  not  that  he  ever 
criticized  or  interfered  with  the  arrangements 
that  Nutley  made,  but  Nutley  felt  vaguely 
that  he  watched  everything  and  registered 
internal  comments ;  yes,  although  not  a 
very  sensitive  chap,  perhaps — he  hadn't  time 


THE  HEIR  77 

for  that — Nutley  had  become  aware  that  very 
little  eluded  Chase's  observation.  It  was 
odd,  and  rather  annoying,  that  in  spite  of 
his  taciturnity  and  his  shy  manner,  Chase 
should  so  contrive  to  make  himself  felt.  Any 
of  the  people  on  the  estate,  who  had  spoken 
with  him  more  than  once  or  twice,  had  a 
liking  and  a  respect  for  him.  Perhaps, 
Nutley  consoled  himself,  it  was  thanks  to 
tradition  quite  as  much  as  to  Chase's  per- 
sonality, and  he  permitted  himself  a  little 
outburst  against  the  tradition  he  hated, 
envied,  and  scorned. 

Now  that  Chase  had  gone  back  to  Wolver- 
hampton,  Nutley  arrived  more  aggressively 
at  Blackboys,  rang  the  bell  louder,  made 
more  demands  on  Fortune,  and  bustled 
everybody  about  the  place. 

The  first  time  he  came  there  in  the  owner's 
absence  the  dog  met  him  in  the  hall,  stretch- 
ing himself  as  though  just  awakened  from 
sleep,  coming  forward  with  his  nails  clicking 
on  the  boards. 

"  He  misses  his  master,"  said  Fortune 
compassionately. 

Nutley  thought,  with  discomfort,  that  the 
whole  place  missed  Chase.  There  were  traces 
of  him  everywhere — the  obverse  of  his  hand- 


78  THE  HEIR 

writing  on  the  pad  of  blotting-paper  in  the 
library,  his  stick  in  the  hall,  and  some  of  his 
clothes  in  a  pile  on  the  bed  in  his  bedroom. 

"  Yes,  Mr.  Chase  left  a  good  many  of  his 
things  behind,"  said  Fortune  when  consulted. 

"  When  does  he  think  he's  coming  back  ? — 
the  sale  takes  place  next  week,"  grumbled 
Nutley. 

It  was  nearly  midsummer ;  the  heat-haze 
wickered  above  the  ground,  and  the  garden 
was  tumultuous  with  butterflies  and  flowers. 

"  It  seems  a  pity  to  think  of  Mr.  Chase 
missing  all  this  fine  weather,"  Fortune  re- 
marked. 

Nutley  had  no  affection  whatever  for 
Fortune  ;  he  possessed  the  knack  of  making 
remarks  to  which  he  could  not  reasonably 
take  exception,  but  which  contrived  slightly 
to  irritate  him. 

"  I  daresay  he's  getting  the  fine  weather 
where  he  is,"  he  replied  curtly. 

"  Ah,  but  in  towns  it  isn't  the  same  thing  ; 
when  he's  got  his  own  garden  here,  and  all," 
said  Fortune,  not  yielding  to  Nutley,  who 
merely  shrugged,  and  started  talking  about 
the  sale  in  a  sharp  voice. 

He  was  in  his  element,  Chase  once  dis- 
missed from  his  mind.  He  came  up  to  Black- 


THE  HEIR  79 

boys  nearly  every  day,  quite  unnecessarily, 
giving  every  detail  his  attention,  fawning 
upon  anyone  who  seemed  a  likely  purchaser 
for  the  house,  gossiping  with  the  dealers  who 
now  came  in  large  numbers,  and  accepting 
their  cigars  with  a  "  Well,  I  don't  mind  if  I 
do — bit  of  a  strain,  you  know,  all  this — the 
responsibility,  and  so  on."  He  had  the 
acquisitiveness  of  a  magpie,  for  scraps  of 
sale-room  gossip.  Dealers  ticking  off  items 
in  their  catalogues,  men  in  green  baize 
aprons  shifting  furniture,  the  front  door 
standing  permanently  open  to  all  comers, 
were  all  a  source  of  real  gratification  to  him  ; 
while  in  the  number  of  motors  that  waited 
under  the  shade  of  the  trees  he  took  a  per- 
sonal pride.  He  rubbed  his  hands  with 
pleasure  over  the  coming  and  going,  and  at 
the  crunch  of  fresh  wheels  on  the  gravel. 
Chase's  ridiculous  little  padlock  on  the 
wooden  gate — there  wasn't  much  trace  of 
that  now!  Front  door  and  back  door  were 
open,  the  summer  breeze  wandering  gently 
between  them  and  winnowing  the  shreds  of 
straw  that  trailed  about  the  hall,  and  in  the 
passage  beyond ;  and  anyone  who  had 
finished  inspecting  the  house  might  pass  into 
the  garden  by  the  back  door,  to  stroll  up  the 


80  THE  HEIR 

central  walk,  till  Nutley,  looking  out  of  an 
upper  floor  window,  taking  upon  himself  the 
whole  credit,  and  full  of  a  complacent  satis- 
faction, thought  that  the  place  had  the 
appearance  of  a  garden  party. 

A  country  sale !  It  was  one  that  would  set 
two  counties  talking,  one  that  would  attract 
all  the  biggest  swells  from  London  (Wert- 
heimer,  Durlacher,  Duveen,  Partridge,  they 
had  all  been  already,  taking  notes),  such  a 
collection  didn't  often  come  under  the  ham- 
mer— no,  by  jove,  it  didn't !  and  Nutley, 
reading  for  the  fiftieth  time  the  name 
"  Nutley,  Farebrother  and  Co.,  Estate  Agents 
and  Solicitors,"  at  the  foot  of  the  poster, 
reflected  how  that  name  would  gain  in  fame 
and  lustre  by  the  association.  Not  that 
Farebrother,  not  that  Co.,  had  been  allowed 
many  fingers  in  the  pie  ;  he,  Nutley,  had 
done  it  all ;  it  was  his  show,  his  ewe-lamb  ; 
he  would  have  snapped  the  head  off  anyone 
who  had  dared  to  claim  a  share,  or  scorned 
them  with  a  single  glance. 

He  wondered  to  whom  the  house  itself 
would  ultimately  fall.  He  had  received  several 
offers  for  it,  but  none  of  them  had  reached 
the  reserve  figure  of  thirty  thousand.  The 
dealers,  of  course,  would  make  a  ring  for  the 


THE  HEIR  81 

furniture,  the  tapestries,  and  the  pictures, 
and  would  doubtless  resell  them  to  its  new 
owner  of  the  house  at  an  outrageous  profit. 
Nutley  had  his  eye  on  a  Brazilian  as  a  very 
probable  purchaser  ;  not  only  had  he  called 
at  the  estate  office  himself  for  all  possible 
particulars,  but  on  a  second  occasion  he  had 
brought  his  son  and  his  daughter  with  him, 
exotic  birds  brilliantly  descending  upon  the 
country  solicitor's  office.  They  had  come 
in  a  white  Rolls-Royce,  which  had  imme- 
diately compelled  Nutley's  disapproving  re- 
spect ;  it  had  a  negro  chauffeur  on  the  box, 
the  silver  statuette  of  a  nymph  with  stream- 
ing hair  on  the  bonnet,  and  a  spray  of  orchids 
in  a  silver  and  crystal  vase  inside.  The 
Brazilian  himself  was  an  unpretentious  cattle 
magnate,  with  a  quick,  clipped  manner,  and 
a  wrinkled  face  the  colour  of  a  coffee-bean ; 
he  might  be  the  purveyor  of  dollars,  but  he 
wasn't  the  showy  one ;  the  ostentation  of 
the  family  had  passed  into  the  children. 
These  were  in  their  early  twenties,  spoilt  and 
fretful ;  the  tyrants  of  their  widowed  father, 
who  listened  to  all  their  remarks  with  an 
indulgent  smile.  Nutley,  who  had  never  in 
the  whole  of  his  life  seen  anything  like  them, 
tried  to  make  himself  believe  that  he  couldn't 


82  THE  HEIR 

decide  which  was  the  more  offensive,  but, 
secretly,  he  was  much  impressed.  "  Plenty 
of  bounce,  anyway,"  he  reflected,  observing 
the  son,  his  pearl-grey  suit  over  admirably 
waisted  stays,  his  black  hair  swept  back 
from  his  brow,  and  shining  like  the  flanks  of 
a  wet  seal,  his  lean  hands  weighted  with  fat 
platinum  rings,  his  walk  that  slightly  swayed, 
as  though  the  syncopated  rhythm  of  the 
plantations  had  passed  for  ever  into  his 
blood ;  and,  observing  him,  the  strangest 
shadow  of  envy  passed  across  the  shabby 
little  solicitor  in  the  presence  of  such  lacka- 
daisical youth.  .  .  .  The  daughter,  more 
languid  and  more  subtly  insolent,  so  plump 
that  she  seemed  everywhere  cushioned  :  her 
tiny  hands  had  no  knuckles,  but  only  dimples, 
and  everything  about  her  was  round,  from 
the  single  pearls  on  her  fingers  to  the  toe- 
caps  of  her  patent  leather  shoes.  Clearly  the 
father  had  offered  Blackboys  to  the  pair  as 
an  additional  toy.  They  were  as  taken  with 
it  as  their  deliberately  unenthusiastic  manner 
would  permit  them  to  betray ;  and  Nutley 
guessed  that  sufficient  sulks  on  the  part  of 
the  daughter  would  quickly  induce  the 
widower  to  increase  his  offer  of  twenty-five 
thousand  by  the  necessary  five.  Up  to  the 


THE  HEIR  83 

present  he  had  held  iirm,  a  business  con- 
vention which  Nutley  was  ready  tacitly  to 
accept.  He  had  reported  the  visit  to  Chase, 
but  Chase  (the  unaccountable)  hadn't  taken 
much  interest.  Since  then  he  had  seen  the 
brother  and  sister  several  times  wandering 
over  the  house  and  garden,  and  this  he  took 
to  be  a  promising  sign.  The  father  he  hadn't 
seen  again,  but  that  didn't  distress  him  :  the 
insolent  pair  were  the  ones  who  counted. 

XIII 

ONLY  two  days  remained.  Chase  had  sent 
for  his  clothes,  and  had  enclosed  a  note  for 
Nutley  in  his  letter  to  Fortune  :  "  Press  of 
business  "  prevented  him  from  returning  to 
Blackboys,  but  he  was  content  to  leave 
everything  in  Nutley 's  hands,  etc.  Polite 
enough.  Nutley  read  the  note,  standing  in 
the  gallery  which  had  been  cleared  in  pre- 
paration for  the  sale.  (It  was,  he  thought,  a 
stroke  of  genius  to  hold  the  sale  in  the  house 
itself — to  display  the  furniture  in  its  own 
surroundings,  instead  of  in  the  dreary  frame 
of  an  auction  room.  That  would  make  very 
little  difference  to  the  dealers,  of  course,  who 
knew  the  intrinsic  value  ;  but  from  the  stray 


84  THE  HEIR 

buyers,  the  amateurs  who  would  be  after  the 
less  important  things,  it  might  mean  any- 
thing up  to  an  extra  25  per  cent.).  He  was 
alone  in  the  gallery,  for  it  was  not  yet  ten 
o'clock,  and  he  maliciously  wondered  what 
Chase's  feelings  would  be  if  he  could  see  the 
room  now,  the  baize-covered  tables  on  trestle 
legs,  the  auctioneer's  desk  and  high  chair, 
the  rows  of  cane  chairs  arranged  as  though 
in  a  theatre,  the  choicest  pieces  of  furniture 
grouped  behind  cords  at  the  further  end  of 
the  room,  like  animals  awaiting  slaughter  in 
a  pen.  The  little  solicitor  was  from  time  to 
time  startled  by  the  stab  of  malice  that 
thought  of  Chase  evoked ;  he  was  startled 
now.  He  clapped  his  hand  over  his  mouth — 
to  suppress  an  ejaculation,  or  a  grin? — and 
glanced  round  the  gallery.  It  was  empty 
but  for  the  lean  dog,  who  sat  with  his  tail 
curled  like  a  whip-lash  round  his  haunches, 
and  who  might  have  come  down  out  of  the 
tapestry,  gravely  regarding  Nutley.  The 
lean  dog,  scenting  disruption,  had  trailed 
about  the  house  for  days  like  a  haunted  soul, 
and  Nutley  had  fallen  into  the  habit  of 
saying  to  him,  with  a  jocularity  oddly 
peppered  by  venom,  "  I'll  put  you  into  the 
sale  as  an  extra  item,  spindle-shanks." 


THE   HEIR  85 

Dimly,  it  gratified  him  to  insult  Chase 
through  Chase's  dog. 

People  began  to  filter  in.  They  wandered 
about,  looking  at  things  and  consulting  their 
catalogues ;  Nutley,  who  examined  them 
stealthily  and  with  as  much  self- consciousness 
as  if  he  had  been  the  owner,  discriminated 
nicely  between  the  bona  fide  buyers  and 
those  who  came  out  of  idle  curiosity.  (Chase 
had  already  recognized  the  mentality  that 
seizes  upon  any  pretext  for  penetrating  into 
another  man's  house ;  if  as  far  as  his  bed- 
room, so  much  the  better.)  Nutley  might  as 
well  have  returned  to  his  office  since  here 
there  was  no  longer  anything  for  him  to  do, 
but  he  lingered,  with  the  satisfaction  of  an 
impresario.  Could  he  but  have  stood  at  the 
front  door,  to  receive  the  people  as  the  cars 
rolled  up  at  intervals!  Hospitable  and  wel- 
coming phrases  came  springing  to  his  lips, 
and  his  hands  spread  themselves  urbanely, 
the  palms  outwards.  No  sharpness  in  his 
manner!  none  of  the  chilblained  acerbity 
that  kept  him  always  on  the  defensive !  noth- 
ing but  honey  and  suavity!  "Walk  in, 
walk  in,  ladies  and  gentlemen  !  No  entrance 
fee  in  my  peep  show.  Twenty  years  I  had 
to  wait  for  the  old  woman  to  die  ;  I  fixed  my 


86  THE  HEIR 

eye  on  her  when  she  was  sixty,  but  she  clung 
on  till  she  was  over  eighty ;  then  she  went. 
It's  all  in  my  hands  now.  Walk  in,  walk  in, 
ladies  and  gentlemen ;  walk  upstairs ;  the 
show's  going  to  begin." 

It  was  very  warm.  Really  an  exceptional 
summer.  If  the  weather  held  for  another 
two  days,  it  would  improve  the  attendance 
at  the  sale.  London  people  would  come 
(Nutley  had  the  sudden  idea  of  running  a 
special).  Even  now,  picnic  parties  were 
dotted  about,  under  the  trees  beside  their 
motors.  No  wonder  that  they  were  glad  to 
exchange  burning  pavements  against  fresh 
grass  for  a  day.  Chase — Chase  wouldn't 
like  the  litter  they  left.  Bits  of  paper,  bottles 
and  tins.  He  wouldn't  say  anything ;  he 
never  did  ;  that  was  exactly  what  made  him 
so  disconcerting ;  but  he  would  look,  and 
his  nose  would  curl.  But  Chase  was  safely 
away,  while  the  picnics  took  place  under  his 
trees,  and  women  in  their  light  summer 
dresses  strolled  about  in  his  garden  and 
pointed  with  their  parasols  at  his  house. 
Nutley  saw  them  from  the  windows.  For 
the  first  time  since  he  remembered  the  place, 
the  parapet  of  the  central  walk  was  bare  of 
peacocks  ;  they  had  taken  refuge  indignantly 


THE   HEIR  87 

in  the  cedars,  where  they  could  be  heard 
screeching.  He  remembered  Chase,  feeding 
them  with  bits  of  bread  from  his  pocket.  He 
remembered  old  Miss  Chase,  wagging  her 
finger  at  him,  and  saying  "  Ah,  Nutley " 
(she  had  always  called  him  by  his  surname, 
like  a  man),  "  you  want  to  deprive  an  old 
maid  of  her  children  ;  it's  too  bad  of  you!  " 

But  the  Chases  were  gone,  both  of  them, 
and  no  Chases  remained,  but  those  who  stared 
sadly  from  their  frames,  where  they  stood 
propped  against  the  wall  ready  to  be  carried 
into  the  sale  room. 

XIV 

JUNE  the  twenty-first.  The  day  of  the  sale. 
Midsummer  day.  Nutley's  day.  He  arrived 
early  at  the  house,  and  met  at  the  door 
Colonel  Stanforth,  who  had  walked  across 
the  park,  and  who  considered  the  solicitor's 
umbrella  with  amusement.  "  Afraid  it  will 
rain,  Nutley  ?  Look  at  that  blue  sky,  not  a 
cloud,  not  even  a  white  one."  They  entered 
the  house  together,  Stanforth  rubicund  and 
large,  Nutley  noticeably  spare  in  the  black 
coat  that  enveloped  him  like  a  sheath. 
"  Might  be  an  undertaker's  mute,"  Stanforth 


88  THE  HEIR 

commented  inwardly.  "  Isn't  Farebrother 
coming  up  to-day  ?  "  he  asked  aloud.  "  Oh, 
yes,  I  daresay  he'll  look  in  later,"  Nutley 
answered,  implying  as  clearly  as  possible  by 
his  tone  that  it  was  not  of  the  slightest 
importance  whether  his  partner  looked  in 
or  not. 

"  Well,  there  aren't  many  people  about 
yet,"  said  Stanforth,  rubbing  his  hands 
vigorously  together.  "  What  about  your 
Brazilians,  eh  ?  Are  they  going  to  put  in  an 
appearance  ?  Chase,  I  hear,  is  still  in  Wolver- 
hampton." 

"  Yes,"  answered  Nutley,  "  we  shan't  see 
much  of  him." 

"  Of  course,  there  was  no  necessity  for  him 
to  come,  but  it's  odd  of  him  to  take  so  little 
interest,  don't  you  think  ?  Odd,  I  mean,  as 
he  seemed  to  like  staying  in  the  place,  and 
to  have  got  on  so  remarkably  well  with  all 
the  people  around.  Not  that  I  saw  anything 
of  him  when  he  was  here.  An  unneigh- 
bourly  sort  of  fellow,  I  should  think.  But 
to  hear  some  of  the  people  talk  about  him, 
by  Gad,  I  was  quite  sorry  he  couldn't  settle 
down  here  as  squire." 

"  As  you  say,  there  was  no  necessity  for 
him  to  come  to  the  sale,"  said  Nutley,  frigidly 


THE   HEIR  89 

ignoring  the  remainder  of  Stanforth's  remarks. 

"  No,  but  if  I'd  been  he,  I  don't  think  I 
could  have  kept  away,  all  the  same." 

Nutley  went  off,  saying  he  had  things  to  see 
to.  On  the  landing  he  met  the  butler  with 
Thane  slouching  disconsolately  after  him. 

"  You'll  see  that  that  dog's  shut  up, 
Fortune,"  he  snapped  at  him. 

An  air  of  suspense  hung  over  everything. 
The  sale  was  announced  to  begin  at  midday, 
because  the  London  train  arrived  shortly 
after  eleven,  but  before  then  the  local  atten- 
dance poured  in,  and  many  people  drove  up 
who  had  not  previously  been  seen  at  the 
house,  their  business  being  with  the  lands  or 
the  farms  :  farmers  in  their  gigs,  tip-toeing 
awkwardly  and  apologetically  on  the  polished 
boards  of  the  hall  while  their  horses  were  led 
away  into  the  stable-yard,  and  there  were 
many  of  the  gentry  too,  who  came  in  waggon- 
ettes or  pony-traps.  Nutley,  watching  and 
prying  everywhere,  observed  the  arrival  of 
the  latter  with  mixed  feelings.  On  the  one 
hand  their  presence  increased  the  crush,  but 
on  the  other  hand  he  did  not  for  a  moment 
suppose  they  had  come  to  buy.  They  came 
in  families,  shy  and  inclined  to  giggle  and  to 
herd  together,  squire  and  lady  dressed  almost 


90  THE  HEIR 

similarly  in  tweed,  and  not  differing  much  as 
to  figure  either,  the  sons  very  tall  and  slim, 
and  slightly  ashamed,  the  daughters  rather 
taller  and  slimmer,  in  light  muslins  and  large 
hats,  all  whispering  together,  half  propitia- 
tory, half  on  the  defensive,  and  casting  sus- 
picious glances  at  everyone  else.  Amongst 
these  groups  Nutley  discerned  the  young 
Brazilian,  graceful  as  an  antelope  amongst 
cattle,  and,  going  to  the  window,  he  saw 
the  white  Rolls-Royce  silently  manoeuvring 
amongst  the  gigs  and  the  waggonettes. 

"  Regular  bean-feast,  ain't  it  ?  "  said 
Stanforth's  voice  behind  him.  "  You  ought 
to  have  had  a  merry-go-round  and  a  gipsy 
booth,  Nutley." 

Nutley  uncovered  his  teeth  in  a  nervously 
polite  smile.  He  looked  at  his  watch,  and 
decided  that  it  was  time  the  London  motors 
began  to  arrive.  Also  the  train  was  due. 
Most  of  those  who  came  by  train  would  have 
to  walk  from  the  station ;  it  wasn't  far 
across  the  village  and  down  the  avenue  to 
the  house.  He  could  see  the  advance  guard 
already,  walking  in  batches  of  two  and  three. 
And  there  was  Farebrother ;  silly  old  Fare- 
brother,  with  his  rosy  face,  and  his  big 
spectacles,  and  his  woolly  white  curls  under 


THE  HEIR  91 

the  broad  hat.  Not  long  to  wait  now.  The 
auctioneer's  men  were  at  their  posts  ;  most 
of  the  chairs  in  the  gallery  were  occupied, 
only  the  front  rows  being  left  empty  owing  to 
diffidence ;  the  auctioneer  himself,  Mr.  Webb, 
had  arrived  and  stood  talking  to  Colonel 
Stanforth,  with  an  air  of  unconcern,  on  any 
topic  other  than  the  sale. 

The  farms  and  outlying  portions  were  to 
be  dealt  with  first,  then  the  house  and  the 
contents  of  the  house,  then  the  park,  and  the 
building  lots  that  had  been  carved  out  of  the 
park  and  that  were  especially  dear  to  Nutley. 
It  would  be  a  long  sale,  and  probably  an 
exciting  one.  He  hoped  there  would  be 
competition  over  the  house.  He  knew  that 
several  agencies  were  after  it,  but  thought 
that  he  would  place  his  money  on  the  Brazi- 
lian. 

A  continuous  stir  of  movement  and  con- 
versation filled  the  gallery.  People  came  up 
to  Nutley  and  asked  him  questions  in  whis- 
pers, and  some  of  the  big  dealers  nodded  to 
him.  Nearly  all  the  men  had  their  cata- 
logues and  pencils  ready ;  some  were  reading 
the  booklet.  The  Brazilian  slipped  into  a 
prominent  seat,  accompanied  by  his  solicitor. 
A  quarter  to  twelve.  The  garden  was  de- 
G 


92  THE  HEIR 

serted  now,  for  everyone  had  crowded  into 
the  house.  Five  minutes  to  twelve.  Mr. 
Webb  climbed  up  into  his  high  chair,  adjusted 
his  glasses,  and  began  turning  over  some 
papers  on  the  desk  before  him. 

A  message  was  brought  to  Nutley  :  Mr. 
Webb  would  be  much  obliged  if  he  would 
remain  at  hand  to  answer  any  point  that 
might  be  raised.  Nutley  was  only  too  glad. 
He  went  and  leant  against  the  auctioneer's 
chair,  at  the  back,  and  from  there  surveyed 
the  whole  length  of  the  room.  Rows  of 
expectant  people.  People  leaning  against 
the  walls  and  in  the  doorways.  The  gaitered 
farmers.  The  gentry.  The  dealers.  The 
clerks  and  small  fry.  The  men  in  green 
baize  aprons.  Such  a  crowd  as  the  gallery 
had  never  seen. 

"  Lot  1,  gentlemen.  .  .  ." 

The  sharp  rap  of  the  auctioneer's  little 
ivory  hammer,  and  the  buzz  in  the  room  was 
stilled  ;  throats  were  cleared,  heads  raised. 

"  Lot  1,  gentlemen.  Three  cottages  ad- 
joining the  station,  with  one  acre  of  ground  ; 
coloured  green  on  plan.  What  bids,  gentle- 
men ?  Anyone  start  the  bidding  ?  Five 
hundred  guineas  ?  four  hundred  ?  Come, 
come,  gentlemen,  please,"  admonishing  them, 


THE  HEIR  93 

"  we  have  a  great  deal  to  get  through.  I  ask 
your  kind  co-operation." 

Knocked  down  at  seven  hundred  and  fifty 
guineas.  Nutley  noted  the  sum  in  the  margin 
of  his  catalogue.  Webb  was  a  capital  auc- 
tioneer :  he  bustled  folk,  he  chaffed  them,  he 
got  them  into  a  good  temper,  he  made  them 
laugh  so  that  their  purses  laughed  wide  in 
company.  He  had  a  jolly  round  face,  a 
twinkling  eye,  and  a  rose-bud  in  his  button- 
hole. Five  hundred  and  fifty  for  the  next 
lot,  two  cottages  ;  so  far,  so  good. 

"  Now,  gentlemen,  we  come  to  something 
a  little  more  interesting :  the  farm-house  and 
lands  known  as  Orchards.  An  excellent 
house,  and  a  particularly  fine  brew  of  ale 
kept  there,  too,  as  I  happen  to  know — though 
that  doesn't  go  with  the  house."  (The 
audience  laughed;  it  appreciated  that  kind 
of  pleasantry.)  "  What  offers,  gentlemen  ? 
Two  hundred  acres  of  fine  pasture  and  arable, 
ten  acres  of  shaw,  twenty  acres  of  first-class 
fruit-trees.  .  .  ."  "That's  so,  sir,"  from 
Chase's  old  apple- dealer  friend  at  the  back 
of  the  room,  and  heads  were  turned  smilingly 
towards  him.  "  There  spoke  the  best  author- 
ity in  the  county,"  cried  the  auctioneer, 
catching  on  to  this,  "  as  nice  a  little  property 


94  THE   HEIR 

as  you  could  wish.  I've  a  good  mind  to 
start  the  bidding  myself.  Fifty  guineas — • 
I'll  put  up  fifty  guineas.  Who'll  go  one 
better  ?  "  The  audience  laughed  again  ;  Mr. 
Webb  had  a  great  reputation  as  a  wag.  Nut- 
ley  caught  sight  of  Far ebr other's  full- moon 
face  at  the  back  of  the  room,  perfunctorily 
smiling. 

The  tenant  began  bidding  for  his  own 
farm  ;  he  had  been  to  Nutley  to  see  whether 
a  mortgage  could  be  arranged,  and  Nutley 
knew  the  extent  of  his  finances.  The  voice 
of  the  auctioneer  followed  the  bidding  mono- 
tonously up,  "  Two  thousand  guineas  .  .  . 
two  thousand  two  hundred  .  .  .  come,  gen- 
tlemen, we're  wasting  time  .  .  .  two  thou- 
sand five  hundred.  .  .  ." 

Knocked  down  to  the  farmer  at  three 
thousand  five  hundred  guineas.  A  wink 
passed  between  Nutley  and  the  purchaser  : 
the  place  had  not  sold  very  well,  but  Nutley 's 
firm  would  get  the  commission  on  the  mort- 
gage. 

Lot  4.  Jakes'  cottage.  Nutley  remem- 
bered that  Chase  had  once  commented  on 
Jakes'  garden,  and  he  remembered  also  that 
old  Miss  Chase  used  to  favour  Jakes  and  his 
flowers ;  he  supposed  sarcastically  that  it 


THE  HEIR  95 

was  hereditary  among  the  Chases  to  favour 
Jakes.  That  same  stab  of  malice  came  back 
to  him,  and  this  time  it  included  Jakes  :  the 
man  made  himself  ridiculous  over  his  garden, 
carrying  (as  he  boasted)  soil  and  leaf-mould 
home  for  it  for  miles  upon  his  back  ;  that  was 
all  over  now,  and  his  cottage  would  first  be 
sold  as  a  building  site  and  then  pulled  down. 
He  caught  sight  of  Jakes,  standing  near  a 
window,  his  every-day  corduroy  trousers 
tied  as  usual  with  string  round  the  knees  ;  he 
looked  terribly  embarrassed,  and  was  swallow- 
ing hard ;  the  Adam's  apple  in  his  throat 
moved  visibly  above  his  collar.  He  stood 
twisting  his  cap  between  his  hands.  Nutley 
derisively  watched  him,  saying  to  himself 
that  the  fellow  might  be  on  the  point  of 
making  a  speech.  Surely  he  wasn't  going 
to  bid!  a  working-man  on  perhaps  forty 
shillings  a  week!  Nutley  was  taken  up  and 
entertained  by  this  idea,  when  a  stir  at  the 
door  distracted  his  attention ;  he  glanced  to 
see  who  the  late-comer  was,  and  perceived 
Chase. 


96  THE   HEIR 


XV 

CHASE  entered  hurriedly,  and  asked  a  ques- 
tion of  a  man  standing  by  ;  he  looked  haggard 
and  ill,  but  the  answer  to  his  question  ap- 
peared to  reassure  him,  and  he  slipped 
quietly  to  the  chair  that  somebody  offered 
him.  Several  people  recognized  him,  and 
pointed  him  out  to  one  another.  Nutley 
stared,  incredulous  and  indignant.  Just  like 
his  sly  ways  again !  Why  take  the  trouble  to 
write  and  say  he  was  detained  by  press  of 
business,  when  he  had  every  intention  of 
coming  ?  Sly.  Well,  might  he  enjoy  him- 
self, listening  to  the  sale  of  his  house ;  Nutley, 
with  an  angry  shrug,  wished  him  joy. 

Meanwhile  Mr.  Webb's  voice,  above  him, 
continued  to  advocate  Jakes'  cottage, 
"  either  as  a  building  site  or  as  a  tea-room, 
gentlemen ;  I  needn't  point  out  to  you  the 
advantages  of  either  in  the  heart  of  a 
picturesque  village  on  a  well-frequented 
motor  route.  The  garden's  only  a  quarter 
of  an  acre,  but  you  have  seen  it  to-day  on 
your  way  from  the  station ;  a  perfect 
picture.  What  offers  ?  Come  !  We're  dis- 
posed to  let  this  lot  go  cheap  as  the  cottage 


THE  HEIR  97 

is  in  need  of  repair.  It's  a  real  chance  for 
somebody." 

"  One  hundred  guineas,"  called  out  a  fat 
man,  known  to  Nutley  as  the  proprietor  of 
an  hotel  in  Eastbourne. 

"  And  fifty,"  said  Jakes  in  a  trembling 
voice. 

Nutley  suppressed  a  cackle  of  laughter. 

"  And  seventy- five,"  said  the  fat  man, 
after  glaring  at  Jakes. 

"  Two  hundred,"  said  Jakes. 

Chase  sat  on  the  edge  of  his  chair,  twisting 
his  fingers  together  and  keeping  his  eyes 
fixed  on  Jakes.  So  the  man  was  trying  to 
save  his  garden  ! — and  the  flowers,  through 
whose  roots  he  said  he  would  put  a  baggin- 
hook  sooner  than  let  them  pass  to  a  stranger. 
Where  did  he  imagine  he  could  get  the 
money  ?  poor  fool.  The  fat  man  was  after 
the  cottage  for  some  commercial  enterprise. 
What  had  the  auctioneer  suggested  ? — a  tea- 
room ?  That  was  it,  without  a  doubt — a  tea- 
room! A  painted  sign-board  hanging  out 
to  attract  motorists  ;  little  tin  tables  in  the 
garden,  perhaps,  on  summer  evenings. 

The  fat  man  ran  Jakes  up  to  two  hundred 
and  fifty  before  Jakes  began  to  falter. 
Something  in  the  near  region  of  two  hundred 


98  THE  HEIR 

and  fifty  was  the  limit,  Chase  guessed,  to 
which  his  secret  and  inscrutable  financial 
preparations  would  run.  What  plans  had 
he  made  before  coming,  poor  chap  ;  what 
plans,  full  of  a  lamentable  pathos,  to  meet 
the  rivalry  of  those  who  might  possibly  have 
designs  upon  his  tenement  ?  Surely  not  very 
crafty  plans,  or  very  adequate  ?  They  had 
reached  two  hundred  and  seventy-five.  Jakes 
was  distressed ;  and  to  Nutley,  scornfully 
watching,  as  to  Chase,  compassionately 
watching,  and  as  to  the  auctioneer,  impar- 
tially watching,  it  was  clear  that  neither  con- 
science nor  prudence  counselled  him  to  go 
any  further. 

"  Two  hundred  and  seventy-five  guineas 
are  bid,"  said  the  voice  of  the  auctioneer ; 
"two  hundred  and  seventy-five  guineas," 
—pause— "  going,  going  .  .  ." 

"  Three  hundred,"  brought  out  Jakes, 
upon  whose  forehead  sweat  was  standing. 

"  And  ten,"  said  the  fat  man  remorselessly. 

Jakes  shook  his  head  as  the  auctioneer 
looked  at  him  in  inquiry. 

"  Three  hundred  and  ten  guineas  are  bid," 
said  the  acutioneer,  "  three  hundred  and  ten 
guineas,"  his  voice  rising  and  trailing,  "  no 
more  ?-• — a  little  more,  sir,  come!  "  in  persua- 


THE  HEIR  99 

sion  to  Jakes,  who  shook  his  head  again. 
"  Lot  4,  gentlemen,  going  for  the  sum  of 
three  hundred  and  ten  guineas,  going,  going, 
gone."  The  hammer  came  down  with  a 
sharp  tap,  and  Mr.  Webb  leant  across  his 
desk  to  take  the  name  and  address  of  the 
purchaser. 

Jakes  began  making  his  way  out  of  the 
room.  He  had  the  shameful  air  of  one  who 
has  failed  before  all  men  in  the  single  audacity 
of  his  life-time.  For  him,  Lot  4  had  been 
the  lot  that  must  rivefr  everyone's  attention  ; 
it  had  been  not  an  episode  but  the  apex. 
Chase  saw  him  slink  out,  burdened  by  dis- 
grace. It  would  be  several  hours  before  he 
regained  the  spirit  to  put  the  bagginhook 
through  the  flowers. 

"  Lot  5  ..."  Callous  as  Roman  sports 
proceeding  on  the  retreat  of  the  conquered 
gladiator.  Scatter  sand  on  the  blood !  Chase 
sat  on,  dumbly  listening,  the  auctioneer's 
voice  and  the  rap  of  the  hammer  twanging, 
metallic,  across  the  chords  of  his  bursting 
head.  He  had  surely  been  mad  to  come, — 
to  expose  himself  to  this  pain,  madder  than 
poor  Jakes,  who  at  least  came  with  a  certain 
hope.  What  had  brought  him — his  body  felt 
curiously  light ;  he  knew  only  that  he  had 


100  THE  HEIR 

slipped  out  of  his  lodgings  at  six  that  morn- 
ing, had  found  his  way  into  trains,  his  limbs 
performing  the  necessary  actions  for  him, 
while  his  mind  continued  remote  and  fixed 
only  upon  the  distant  object  towards  which 
he  was  being  rapidly  carried.  His  house — 
during  this  miserable  week  in  Wolverhamp- 
ton,  what  had  they  been  doing  to  his 
house  ? — perpetrating  what  infamy  ?  Sitting 
in  the  train  his  mind  glazed  into  that  one 
concentration — Blackboys  ;  he  had  won- 
dered dimly  whether  he  would  indeed  find 
the  place  where  he  had  left  it,  among  the 
trees,  or  whether  he  had  dreamt  it,  under  an 
enchantment ;  whether  life  in  Wolverhamp- 
ton — his  office,  his  ledgers,  his  clerks,  his 
lodgings — were  not  the  only  reality  ?  Still 
his  limbs,  intelligent  servants,  had  carried 
him  over  the  difficulties  of  the  cross-country 
journey,  rendering  him  at  the  familiar  sta- 
tion— a  miracle.  As  he  crossed  the  stile  at 
the  bend  of  the  footpath — for  he  had  taken 
the  short  cut  across  the  fields  from  the 
station — ^he  had  come  upon  the  house,  he 
had  heard  his  breath  sob  in  his  throat,  and 
he  had  repressed  the  impulse  to  stretch  out 
both  his  hands.  .  .  .  With  his  eagerness  his 
steps  had  quickened.  It  was  the  house, 


THE  HEIR  101 

though  not  as  he  knew  it.  Not  slumbrous. 
Not  secluded.  Carriages  and  motors  under 
the  trees,  grooms  and  chauffeurs  strolling 
about,  idly  staring.  The  house  unveiled, 
prostituted ;  yes,  it  was  like  seeing  one's 
mistress  in  a  slave-market.  He  had  bounded 
up  the  steps  into  the  hall,  where  a  handful  of 
loafing  men  had  quizzed  him  impertinently. 
The  garden  door  opposite,  stood  open,  and 
he  could  see  right  up  the  garden ;  was 
puzzled,  in  passing,  because  he  missed  the 
peacocks  parading  the  blazon  of  their 
spread  tails.  The  familiarity  of  the  pro- 
portions closed  instantly  round  him.  Wol- 
verhampton  receded  ;  this  was  reality  ;  this 
was  home. 

He  had  gone  up  the  staircase,  his  head 
reeling  with  anger  when  he  saw  that  the 
pictures  had  been  taken  down  from  their 
places,  and  stood  propped  along  the  walls  of 
the  upper  passage,  ticketed  and  numbered. 
He  had  madly  resented  this  interference  with 
his  property.  Then  he-h^;d  g'oiie  iiitp  -the 
gallery,  sick  and  blind,  dazzled  by  the  sight 
that  met  him  there,  as.  though  fte<had;  come 
suddenly  into  too  strong  a  light.  He  had 
assured  himself  at  once  that  they  had  not 
yet  reached  the  selling  of  the  house.  Still 


102  THE  HEIR 

his — and    he    stumbled    into    a    chair    and 
assisted  at  the  demolition  of  Jakes. 

The  windows  were  wide  open ;  bees 
blundered  in  and  out ;  the  tops  of  the  woods 
appeared,  huge  green  pillows  ;  above  them 
the  cloudless  sky  ;  Midsummer  day.  Where, 
then,  was  the  sweet  harmony  of  the  house 
and  garden  that  waited  upon  the  lazy  hours 
of  such  a  day  ? — driven  out  by  dust  and 
strangers,  the  Long  Gallery  made  dingy  by 
rows  of  chairs,  robbed  of  its  own  mellow 
furnishing,  robbed  of  its  silence  by  sharp 
voices  ;  the  violation  of  sanctuary.  Chase 
sat  with  his  fingers  knotted  together  between 
his  knees.  Perhaps  a  score  of  people  in  that 
room  knew  him  by  sight ;  to  the  others  he 
was  an  onlooker ;  to  the  ones  who  knew 
him,  an  owner  hoping  for  a  good  price.  They 
must  know  he  was  poor — the  park  fence  was 
lichen-covered  and  broken  down  in  many 
places ;  the  road  up  to  the  house  was  over- 
grown with  weeds.  Poor — obliged  to  sell ; 
the  place,  for  &li  its  beauty,  betrayed  its 
poverty,  ,  Qnly  the  farmers  looked  pros- 
perous; (Those,  farmers  must  have  prospered 
better  than  they  ever  admitted,  for  here  was 
one  of  them  buying-in  at  a  most  respectable 
figure  the  house  and  lands  he  rented.)  His 


THE   HEIR  103 

over-excited  senses  quietening  down  a  little, 
he  paid  attention  to  the  progress  of  the  sale, 
finding  there  nothing  but  the  same  intolerable 
pain ;  the  warmth  of  his  secret  memory 
stirred  by  the  chill  probe  of  the  words  he 
heard  pronounced  from  the  auctioneer's 
desk — "  ten  acres  of  fallow,  known  as  Ten- 
Acre  Field,  with  five  acres,  three  roods,  and 
two  perches  of  wood,  including  a  quantity  of 
fine  standing  timber  to  the  value  of  two 
hundred  and  fifty  pounds  " — he  knew  that 
wood  ;  it  was  free  of  undergrowth,  and  the 
bare  tree-trunks  rose  like  columns  straight 
out  of  a  sea  of  bluebells  :  two  hundred  and 
fifty  pounds'  worth  of  standing  timber.  Walk- 
ing in  Ten-Acre  Field  outside  the  edge  of 
that  wood  he  had  scared  many  a  rabbit  that 
vanished  into  the  wood  with  a  frisk  of  white 
tail,  and  had  startled  the  rusty  pheasants  up 
into  heavy  flight. 

Knocked  down  to  the  farmer  who  had  just 
bought-in  his  farm. 

He  didn't  much  resent  the  fields  and  woods 
going  to  the  farmers.  If  anyone  other  than 
himself  must  have  them,  let  it  be  the  yeomen 
by  whom  they  were  worked  and  understood. 
But  the  house — there  was  the  rub,  the 
anguish.  Nutley  had  mentioned  a  Brazilian 


104  THE   HEIR 

(Nutley's  most  casual  word  about  the  house, 
or  a  buyer  for  the  house,  had  remained  in- 
delibly stamped  on  Chase's  mind).  He 
looked  about  now,  for  the  first  time  since  he 
had  come  into  the  room,  and  discovered 
Nutley  leaning  against  the  auctioneer's  high 
chair,  then  he  discovered  the  young  man  who 
must  certainly  be  the  Brazilian  in  question, 
and  all  the  dread  which  had  been  hitherto, 
so  to  speak,  staved  off,  now  smote  him  with 
its  imminence  as  his  eyes  lighted  on  the  un- 
familiar, insouciant  face. 

The  new  owner,  lounging  there,  insuffer- 
able, graceful,  waiting  without  impatience, 
so  insultingly  unperturbed!  Cool  as  a 
cucumber,  that  young  man,  accustomed  to 
find  life  full  of  a  persevering  amiability. 
Chase  made  a  movement  to  rise  ;  he  wanted 
to  fly  the  room,  to  escape  an  ordeal  that 
appalled  his  soul,  but  his  shyness  held  him 
down :  he  could  not  create  a  sensation 
before  so  many  people.  Enraged  as  he  was 
by  the  absurd  weakness  that  caught  him 
thus,  and  prevented  him  from  saving  himself 
while  there  was  still  time,  he  yet  submitted, 
pinned  to  his  chair,  enduring  such  misery  as 
made  all  his  previous  grief  sink  to  the  level 
of  mere  discomfort.  He  yearned  even  after 


THE  HEIR  105 

hours  that  lay  in  the  past,  and  that  at  the 
time  of  their  being  had  seemed  to  him,  in  all 
truth,  sufficiently  weighted ;  the  hours  he 
had  spent  standing  beside  the  dealers  during 
their  minute  examination  of  his  possessions, 
while  he  wrung  out  his  pitiable  flippancies  ; 
then,  in  those  days,  he  had  known  that 
ultimately  they  would  take  their  leave,  and 
that  he  would  be  left  to  turn  back  alone  into 
his  house,  greeted  by  the  dog  beating  his  tail 
against  the  legs  of  the  furniture,  as  pleased 
as  his  master ;  or  the  hour  when,  sitting  in 
this  very  gallery  (how  different  then!),  he 
had  read  through  Nutley's  offensive  booklet, 
and  had  not  known  whether  it  was  chiefly 
anger  or  pain  that  drove  extravagant  ideas 
of  revolt  across  his  mind ;  those  hours  by 
comparison  now  appeared  to  him  elysian — 
he  had  tasted  then  but  the  froth  on  the  cup 
of  bitterness  of  which  he  now  reached  the 
dregs. 

God!  how  quickly  they  were  getting 
through  the  lots!  Lot  14  was  already 
reached,  and  16  was  the  house.  Surely  no 
soul  could  withstand  such  pressure,  but  must 
crumble  like  a  crushed  shell  ?  When  they 
actually  reached  Lot  16,  when  he  heard  the 
auctioneer  start  off  with  his  "  Now,  gentle- 


106  THE  HEIR 

men  .  .  ."  what  would  he  do  then  ?  how 
would  he  behave  ?  It  was  no  longer  shyness 
that  held  him,  but  fascination,  and  a  physical 
sickness  that  made  his  body  clammy  and 
moist  although  he  was  shivering  with  cold. 
Fear  must  be  like  this,  and  from  his  heart  he 
pitied  all  those  who  were  mortally  afraid. 
He  noticed  that  several  people  were  looking 
at  him,  amongst  others  Nutley,  and  he 
thought  that  he  must  be  losing  control  of  his 
reason,  for  it  seemed  to  him  that  Nutley's 
face  was  yellow  and  pointed,  and  was 
grinning  at  him  with  a  squinting  male- 
volence, an  oblique  derision,  altogether  fan- 
tastic, and  pushed  up  quite  close  to  him, 
although  in  reality  Nutley  was  some  way  off. 
He  put  up  his  hand  to  his  forehead,  and  one 
or  two  people  made  an  anxious  movement 
towards  him,  as  though  they  thought  he  was 
going  to  faint.  He  rejected  them  with  a 
vague  gesture,  and  at  that  moment  heard 
the  auctioneer  say,  "  Lot  16,  gentlemen  .  .  ." 

XVI 

THERE  was  a  general  stir  in  the  room,  of 
chairs  being  shifted,  and  legs  uncrossed  and 
recrossed.  Mr.  Webb  gave  a  little  cough, 


THE  HEIR  107 

while  he  laid  aside  his  catalogue  in  favour  of 
the  more  elaborate  booklet,  which  he  opened 
on  the  desk  in  front  of  him,  flattening  down 
the  pages  with  a  precise  hand.    He  drew  him- 
self up,  took  off  his  glasses,  and  tapped  the 
booklet  with  them,  surveying  his  audience. 
"  As  you  know,  ladies  and  gentlemen — as,  in 
fact,  this  monograph,  which  you  have  all  had 
in  your  hands,  will  have  told  you  if  you  did 
not  know  it  before — we  have  in  Blackboys 
one   of  the   most   perfect   examples   of  the 
Elizabethan    manor-house    in    England.      I 
don't  think  I  need  take  up  your  time  and 
my    own   by    enlarging   upon   that,    or   by 
pointing  out  the  historical  and  artistic  value 
of  the  property  about  to  be  disposed  of;    I 
can  safely  leave  the  ancient  building,  and 
the    monograph   so   ably   prepared   by   my 
friend  Mr.  Nutley,  to  speak  for  themselves. 
It  only  remains  for  me  to  beg  those  intending 
to  bid,  to  second  my  efforts  in  putting  the 
sale  through  as  quickly  as  possible,  for  we 
still  have  a  large  portion  of  the  catalogue  to 
deal  with,  and  to  bear  in  mind  that  a  reserve 
figure   of  reasonable   proportions   has   been 
placed  upon  the  manor-house  and  surround- 
ing    grounds. — Lot     16,    the     manor-house 
known  as  Blackboys  Priory,  the  pleasure- 
H 


108  THE   HEIR 

grounds  of  eight  acres,  and  one  hundred  and 
twenty-five  acres  of  park  land  adjoining." 

A  short  silence  succeeded  Mr.  Webb's 
little  speech.  The  Brazilian  and  his  solicitor 
whispered  together.  The  representatives  of 
the  various  agencies  looked  at  one  another 
to  see  who  would  take  the  first  step.  Finally 
a  voice  said,  "  Eight  thousand  guineas." 

"  Come,  come,"  smiled  Mr.  Webb. 

"  Nine  thousand,"  said  another  voice. 

"  I  told  you,  gentlemen,  that  a  reasonable 
reserve  had  been  placed  upon  this  lot,"  said 
the  auctioneer  in  a  tone  of  restrained  im- 
patience, "  and  you  must  all  of  you  be 
sufficiently  acquainted  with  the  standard  of 
sale-room  prices  to  know  that  nine  thousand 
guineas  comes  nowhere  near  a  reasonable 
figure  for  a  property  such  as  the  one  we  have 
now  under  consideration." 

Thus  rebuked,  the  man  who  had  first 
spoken  said,  "  All  right — twelve  thousand." 

"  And  five  hundred,"  said  the  second  man. 

"  Sticky,  sticky,"  murmured  Nutley,  shak- 
ing his  head. 

Still  neither  the  Brazilian  nor  his  solicitor 
made  any  sign.  The  agents  were  evidently 
unwilling  to  show  their  hands  ;  then  a  little 
man  began  to  bid  on  behalf  of  an  American 


THE   HEIR  109 

standing  at  his  elbow  :  "  Thirteen  thousand 
guineas." 

This  stirred  the  agents,  and  between  them 
all  the  bidding  crackled  up  to  eighteen  thou- 
sand. Mr.  Webb,  judging  that  the  American 
was  probably  good  for  twenty  or  twenty-five, 
and  wishing  to  entice  the  Brazilian  into  com- 
petition, said  in  the  same  resigned  tone,  "  I 
am  unwilling  to  withdraw  this  lot,  but  I  am 
afraid  we  cannot  afford  to  waste  time  in 
this  fashion." 

"  Make  it  twenty,  sir,"  called  out  the 
American,  "  and  let's  get  a  move  on." 

"  Thank  you,  sir,"  said  Mr.  Webb,  in  the 
midst  of  a  laugh.  "  I  am  bid  twenty  thou- 
sand guineas  for  Lot  16,  twenty  thousand 
guineas  are  bid.  .  .  and  five  hundred  on 
my  right  .  .  .  twenty- one  thousand  on  my 
left  .  .  .  thank  you  again,  sir  :  twenty-two 
thousand  guineas.  Twenty-two  thousand 
guineas.  Surely  no  one  wishes  to  see  this 
lot  withdrawn  ?  Twenty-two  thousand  gui- 
neas. And  five  hundred.  And  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  more.  Twenty-two  thousand 
seven  hundred  and  fifty  guineas.  .  .  ." 

"  Twenty-three  thousand,"  said  the  solici- 
tor who  had  come  with  the  Brazilian. 

People  craned  forward  now  to  see  and  to 


110  THE   HEIR 

hear.  The  Brazilian  had  been  generally 
pointed  out  as  the  most  likely  buyer,  and 
until  he  or  his  man  took  up  the  bidding  it 
could  be  disregarded  as  preliminary.  The 
small  fry  of  the  agents  served  to  run  it  up 
into  workable  figures,  after  which  it  would 
certainly  pass  beyond  them.  The  duel,  it 
was  guessed,  would  lie  between  the  American 
and  the  Brazilian. 

"  Twenty-four  thousand,"  called  out  one 
of  the  agents  in  a  sort  of  dying  flourish. 

"And  five  hundred,"  said  another,  not  to 
be  outdone. 

"  Twenty-five  thousand,"  said  the  Brazi- 
lian's solicitor. 

"  Twenty-five  thousand  guineas  are  bid," 
said  the  auctioneer.  "  Twenty-five  thousand 
guineas.  I  am  authorised  by  Mr.  Nutley, 
the  solicitor  acting  for  this  estate,  to  tell 
you.  .  .  ."  he  glanced  down  at  Nutley, 
who  nodded,  "...  to  tell  you  that  this  sum 
had  already  been  offered,  and  refused,  at  the 
estate  office.  If,  therefore,  no  gentleman  is 
willing  to  pass  beyond  twenty-five  thousand 
guineas,  I  shall  be  compelled  .  .  .  and  five 
hundred,  thank  you,  sir.  Twenty-five  thou- 
sand five  hundred  guineas." 

Most   people  present  supposed  that  this 


THE  HEIR  111 

sum  came  very  near  to  being  adequate,  and 
a  murmur  to  this  effect  passed  up  and  down 
the  room.  People  looked  at  Chase,  who  was 
as  white  as  death  and  sat  with  his  eye  fixed 
upon  the  floor.  The  American,  good-hu- 
mouredly  enough,  was  trying  to  take  the 
measure  of  the  unruffled  young  man ; 
judging  from  the  slight  shrug  he  gave,  he 
did  not  think  he  stood  much  chance,  but 
nevertheless  he  called,  "  Keep  the  ball  rolling. 
Two  hundred  and  fifty  more." 

The  room  began  to  take  sides,  most  pre- 
ferring the  straight  forward  vulgarity  of  the 
jolly  American  to  the  outlandishness  of  the 
young  man,  which  baffled  and  put  them  ill 
at  their  ease.  (Nutley  found  time  to  think 
that  the  youth  of  the  neighbourhood  would 
need  some  time  before  it  recovered  from  the 
influence  of  that  young  man,  even  if  he  were 
to  pass  away  with  the  day.)  Those  who  had 
the  habit  of  sale-rooms  thought  Chase  lucky 
in  having  two  men,  both  keen,  against  one 
another  to  run  up  a  high  price.  They  bent 
forward  with  their  elbows  on  their  knees  and 
their  chins  in  their  hands,  to  listen. 

"  And  two  hundred  and  fifty  more,"  capped 
the  solicitor. 

"  Twenty-six  thousand  guineas  are  bid," 


112  THE    HEIR 

said  Mr.  Webb,  who  by  now  was  leaning  well 
over  his  desk  and  whose  glances  kept  travel- 
ling sharply  between  the  rivals.  He  was 
sure  that  the  Brazilian  intended,  if  necessary, 
to  go  to  thirty  thousand. 

"  Twenty-seven,"  said  the  American,  reck- 
lessly. 

"  Twenty-eight,"  said  the  solicitor  after 
a  word  with  his  employer. 

The  American  shook  his  head ;  he  was 
very  jovial  and  friendly,  and  bore  no  malice. 
He  laughed,  but  he  shook  his  head. 

"  If  that  is  your  last  word,  gentlemen,  I 
regret  to  say  that  the  lot  must  be  withdrawn, 
as  the  reserve  has  not  been  reached,"  said  Mr. 
Webb.  "  I  am  sure  that  Mr.  Nutley  will 
pardon  me  the  slight  irregularity  in  giving 
you  this  information,  under  the  exceptional 
circumstances.  .  .  ."  Nutley  assented ;  he 
greatly  enjoyed  being  referred  to,  especially 
now  in  Chase's  presence.  ...  "I  only  do 
so  in  order  to  give  you  the  chance  of  continu- 
ing should  you  wish.  .  .  ." 

"  All  right,  anything  to  make  a  running," 
said  the  American,  who  was  certainly  the 
favourite  of  the  excited  and  eager  audience  ; 
"  two  hundred  and  fifty  better  than  the  last 
bid." 


THE  HEIR  113 

The  auctioneer  caught  the  Brazilian's  nod. 

"  I  am  bid  twenty-eight  thousand  five 
hundred  guineas.  .  .  .  twenty-nine  thou- 
sand," he  added,  as  the  American  nodded  to 
him. 

"  Thirty,"  said  the  Brazilian  quietly. 

He  had  not  spoken  before,  and  every  gaze 
was  turned  upon  him  as,  perfectly  cool,  he 
stood  leaning  against  the  wall  in  the  bay  of 
a  window.  He  was  undisturbed,  from  the 
sleekness  of  his  head  down  to  his  immaculate 
shoes.  He  had  all  the  assurance  of  one  who 
is  certain  of  having  spoken  the  last  word. 

"  I'm  out  of  this,"  said  the  American. 

"  Thirty  thousand  guineas  are  bid,"  said 
the  auctioneer  ;  "for  Lot  16  thirty  thousand 
guineas.  THIRTY  THOUSAND  GUINEAS,"  he 
enunciated  ;  "  going,  for  the  sum  of  thirty 
thousand  guineas,  going,  going,  ..." 

Chase  tottered  to  his  feet. 

"  Thirty-one  thousand,"  he  cried  in  a 
strangled  voice,  "  thirty-  one  thousand!" 

XVII 

OF  all  the  astonished  people  in  that  room, 
perhaps  not  the  least  astonished  was  the 
auctioneer.  He  had  never  seen  Chase  before, 


114  THE  HEIR 

and  naturally  thought  that  he  had  to  deal 
with  an  entirely  new  candidate.  He  ad- 
justed his  glasses  to  stare  at  the  solitary  figure 
upright  among  the  rows  of  seated  people, 
standing  with  a  trembling  hand  still  out- 
stretched. He  had  just  time  to  notice  with 
concern  that  Chase  was  deathly  pale,  his 
face  carved  and  hollowed,  before  habit  re- 
asserted itself,  and  he  checked  the  "  gone!  " 
that  had  almost  left  his  lips,  to  resume  his 
chronicle  of  the  bidding  with  "  Thirty-one 
thousand  guineas  .  .  .  any  advance  on  thirty- 
one  thousand  guineas  ?  "  and  cocked  his  eye 
at  the  Brazilian. 

The  Brazilian,  equally  surprised,  had  never 
before  seen  Chase  either.  What  was  this 
fierce  little  man,  who  had  shot  up  out  of  the 
ground  so  turbulently  to  dispute  his  prize  ? 
He  had  not  supposed  that  it  would  be  neces- 
sary to  go  beyond  the  thirty-thousand  ; 
nevertheless  he  was  prepared  to  do  so,  and 
to  make  his  determination  clear  he  continued 
with  the  bidding  himself  instead  of  leaving 
it  to  his  solicitor.  "  And  five  hundred,"  he 
said. 

"  Thirty-five  thousand,"  said  Chase. 

The  sensation  he  would  have  created  by 
escaping  from  the  room  half  an  hour  earlier 


THE  HEIR  115 

was  nothing  to  the  sensation  he  was  creating 
now.  But  he  was  exalted  far  beyond  shyness 
or  false  shame.  He  never  noticed  the  excited 
flutter  all  over  the  room,  or  the  extraordinary 
agitation  of  Nutley,  who  was  saying  "  He's 
mad!  he's  mad  !  "  while  frantically  trying 
to  attract  the  auctioneer's  attention.  Chase 
was  oblivious  to  all  this.  He  stood,  feeling 
himself  inspired  by  some  divine  breath,  the 
room  a  blur  before  him,  and  a  current  of 
power,  quite  indomitable,  surging  through 
his  veins.  Infatuation.  Genius.  They  must 
be  like  this.  This  certainty.  This  unmis- 
takable purpose.  This  sudden  clearing  away 
of  all  irrelevant  preoccupations.  Vistas 
opened  down  into  all  the  obscurities  that  had 
always  shadowed  and  confused  his  brain  : 
the  secret  was  to  find  oneself,  to  know  what 
one  really  wanted,  what  one  really  cared  for, 
and  to  go  for  it  straight.  Wolverhampton  ? 
moonshine!  He  was  no  longer  pale,  nor  did 
he  keep  his  eyes  shamefully  bent  upon  the 
ground ;  he  was  flushed,  embattled ;  his 
nostrils  dilated  and  working. 

But  everyone  else  thought  him  crazy, 
people  sober  watching  the  vaingloriousness 
of  a  man  drunk.  Even  the  auctioneer 
allowed  an  expression  of  surprise  to  cross  his 


116  THE  HEIR 

face,  and  varied  his  formula  by  saying  suave- 
ly, "  Did  I  understand  you  to  say  thirty-five 
thousand,  sir  ?  Thirty-five  thousand  guineas 
are  bid." 

Drunk.  As  a  man  drunk.  Everything 
appeared  smothered  to  his  senses  ;  intense, 
yet  remote.  His  head  light  and  swimming. 
Everything  at  a  great  distance.  The  crowd 
around  him,  stirring,  murmurous,  but  mean- 
ingless. The  auctioneer,  perched  up  there, 
a  diminutive  figure,  miles  away.  Voices, 
muffled  but  enormously  significant,  convey- 
ing threats,  conveying  combat.  All  leagued 
against  him.  This  was  battle  ;  all  the  faces 
were  hostile.  Or  so  he  imagined.  He  was 
glad  of  it.  Fighting  for  his  house  ?  no,  no! 
more,  far  more  than  that :  fighting  for  the 
thing  he  loved.  Fighting  to  shield  from  rape 
the  thing  he  loved.  Fighting  alone  ;  come 
to  his  senses  in  the  very  nick  of  time.  Even 
at  this  moment,  when  he  needed  every  wit 
he  had  ever  had  at  his  command,  he  found 
time  for  a  deep  inward  thankfulness  that  the 
illumination  had  not  come  too  late  or  alto- 
gether passed  him  by.  In  the  nick  of  time  it 
had  come,  and  he  had  recognized  it ;  recog- 
nized it  for  what  it  was,  and  seized  hold  of 
it,  and  now,  triumphantly,  drunkenly,  was 


THE  HEIR  117 

holding  his  own  in  the  face  of  all  this  dismay 
and  opposition.  Moreover,  they  could  not 
defeat  him.  Bidding  in  these  outrageous 
sums  that  need  never  be  paid  over,  he  was 
possessed  of  an  inexhaustible  fortune.  Unde- 
featable — what  confidence  that  gave  him! 
The  more  hands  turned  against  him  the  bet- 
ter. He  challenged  everybody ;  he  hardly 
knew  what  he  was  saying,  only  that  he  leapt 
up  in  thousands,  and  that  in  spite  of  their 
astonishment  and  fury  they  were  powerless 
against  him  :  there  was  nothing  criminal  or 
even  illegal  in  his  buying-in  his  own  house  if 
he  wanted  to. 

And  then  the  end,  that  came  before  he 
knew  that  it  was  imminent ;  the  collapse  of 
the  Brazilian,  whose  expression  had  at  last 
changed  from  deliberate  indifference  to  real 
bad  temper ;  the  voice  of  the  auctioneer, 
suavely  asking  for  his  name  and  his  address  ; 
and  his  own  voice,  giving  his  name  as  though 
for  the  first  time  in  his  life  he  were  not  ashamed 
of  it.  And  then  Nutley,  struggling  across 
the  room  to  him,  snarling  and  yapping  at 
him  like  a  little  enraged  cur,  quite  vague  and 
deprived  of  significance,  but  withal  noisy, 
tiresome,  and  briefly  perplexing ;  a  Nutley 
disproportionately  enraged,  furiously  gesti- 


118  THE  HEIR 

culating,  spluttering  at  him,  "  Are  you  going 
to  play  this  damned  fool  game  with  the 
rest  of  the  sale  ?  "  and  his  answer — he  sup- 
posed he  had  given  an  answer,  because  of 
the  announcement  from  the  auctioneer's 
desk,  which  hushed  the  noisy  room  into  sud- 
den silence,  "  I  have  to  inform  you,  gentle- 
men, that  Lot  16,  and  the  succeeding  lots, 
which  include  the  contents  of  the  mansion, 
also  the  surrounding  park,  have  been  bought 
in,  and  that  the  sale  is  therefore  at  an  end. 
And,  in  the  midst  of  his  bewilderment,  the 
sensation  of  having  his  hand  sought  for  and 
wrung,  while  he  gazed  down  into  Mr.  Fare- 
brother's  old  rosy  face  and  heard  him  say, 
half  inarticulate  with  emotion,  "  I'm  so  glad, 
Mr.  Chase,  I  congratulate  you,  I'm  so  glad, 
I'm  so  glad." 

XVIII 

FINALLY,  the  blessed  peace  and  solitude,  when 
the  last  stranger  with  the  curious  stare  that 
was  now  common  to  them  all  had  quitted  the 
house,  and  the  last  motor  had  rolled  away. 
Chase,  leaning  against  a  column  of  the  porch, 
thought  that  thus  must  married  lovers  feel 
when  after  the  confusion  of  their  wedding  they 


THE  HEIR  119 

are  at  length  left  alone  together.  Certainly 
— with  a  wry  twist  to  his  lip — the  events  of 
the  sale  had  tried  him  as  sorely  as  any 
wedding.  But  here  he  was,  having  won,  in 
possession,  having  driven  away  all  that 
rabble  ;  here  he  was  in  the  warmth,  and  in 
the  hush  that  sank  back  upon  everything 
after  the  ceasing  of  all  that  hubbub  ;  here 
he  was  left  alone  upon  the  field  after  that 
reckless  victory.  Poor  ?  yes !  but  he  could 
work,  he  would  manage  ;  his  poverty  would 
not  be  bitter,  it  would  be  sweet.  He  sud- 
denly stretched  out  his  hands  and  passion- 
ately laid  them,  palms  flattened,  against  the 
bricks ;  bricks  warm  as  their  own  rosiness 
with  the  sun  they  had  drunk  since  morning. 

Midsummer  day.  Swallows  skimming  after 
the  insects  above  the  moat.  Their  level 
wings  almost  grazed  the  water  as  they 
swooped.  Midsummer  day.  All  the  mellow- 
ness of  Blackboys,  all  the  blood  of  the  Chases, 
to  culminate  in  this  midsummer  day.  A 
marvellous  summer.  A  persistently  mar- 
vellous summer.  He  remembered  the  pro- 
cession of  days,  the  dawns  and  the  dusks  and 
the  moon-bathed  nights,  that  had  hallowed 
his  romance.  He  was  inclined  to  believe  that 
neither  hatred  nor  its  ugly  kin  could  any 


120  THE   HEIR 

longer  find  any  place  in  his  heart,  which  had 
been  so  uplifted  and  had  seen  so  radiantly 
the  flare  of  so  many  beacons  lighting  up  the 
fields  of  wisdom.  To  cast  off  the  slavery  of 
the  Wolverhamptons  of  this  world.  To 
know  what  one  really  wanted,  what  one  really 
cared  for,  and  to  go  for  it  straight.  Wasn't 
that  a  good  enough  and  simple  enough  work- 
ing wisdom  for  a  man  to  have  attained  ? 
Simple  enough,  when  it  did  nobody  any 
harm — yet  so  few  seemed  to  learn  it. 

Blackboys!  Wolverhampton !  what  was 
Wolverhampton  beside  Blackboys  ?  What 
was  the  promise  of  that  mediocre  ease  beside 
the  certainty  of  these  exquisite  privations  ? 
What  was  that  drudgery  beside  this  beauty, 
this  pride,  this  Quixotism  ? 

Thane  gambolled  out,  fawning  and  leaping 
round  Chase,  as  Fortune  opened  the  door  of 
the  house. 

"  Will  you  be  having  dinner,  sir,"  he  asked 
demurely,  "  in  the  dining-room  or  in  the 
garden  this  evening  ?  " 


THE   CHRISTMAS  PARTY 
To  A. 


THE  street  door  opened  straight  into  the 
shop.  The  shop  went  back  a  long  way,  and 
was  very  dark  and  crowded  with  objects ; 
everything  seemed  to  have  something  else 
super-imposed  upon  it,  either  set  down  or 
hanging ;  thus  against  the  walls  dangled 
bunches  of  masks,  like  bunches  of  bananas, 
weapons  of  all  kinds,  shields  and  breast- 
plates, swags  of  tinsel  jewellery,  wigs  ;  upon 
the  tops  of  the  cupboards  stood  ewers,  gob- 
lets, candelabra,  all  in  sham  gold  plate  ;  and 
the  counters  themselves  were  strewn  with  a 
miscellany  of  smaller  theatrical  necessities. 
It  was  only  little  by  little  that  the  glance, 
growing  accustomed  to  the  obscurity  of  the 
shop,  began  to  disentangle  object  from  object 
in  this  assortment.  Everything  was  very 
dusty,  with  the  exception  of  the  shields  and 
stray  pieces  of  armour,  which  were  brightly 
furbished  and  detached  themselves  like 
mirrors  in  their  places  on  the  walls,  giving 
a  distorted  reflection  in  miniature  of  the 


124        THE   CHRISTMAS  PARTY 

recesses  of  the  shop.  There  were  stuffed  ani- 
mals, particularly  dusty,  with  glass  eyes  and 
red  open  mouths  showing  two  rows  of  teeth. 
There  were  grotesque  cardboard  heads,  four 
times  life-size,  for  giants.  There  was  the 
figure  of  a  knight  in  a  complete  suit  of  armour, 
with  a  faded  blue  cloak  embroidered  with  the 
lilies  of  France  hanging  from  his  shoulders, 
and  a  closed  helmet  from  which  sprang  a 
tuft  of  plumes  that  had  once  been  white,  but 
that  were  now  grey  with  dust  and  age.  This 
knight  stood  on  the  lowest  step  of  the  stair- 
case that  started  in  the  middle  of  the  shop 
and  led  to  the  upper  floors  of  the  house.  A 
door  across  the  top  of  the  flight  shut  off  the 
secrets  of  the  upper  storey  from  the  observa- 
tion of  customers  in  the  shop  on  the  ground 
floor. 

On  the  upper  floors  the  house  was  old  and 
rambling.  It  straggled  up  and  down  on 
different  levels,  along  dark  passages  and  into 
irregular  little  rooms,  badly  lit  by  small 
windows,  and,  like  the  shop,  encumbered 
with  objects ;  not  only  by  the  furniture,  which 
was  much  too  bulky  for  the  size  of  the  rooms, 
but  also  by  properties  which  belonged  to  the 
shop,  and  which  at  various  times  had  been 
huddled  upstairs  in  the  course  of  a  clearance 


THE  CHRISTMAS  PARTY       125 

below.  There  were  rows  of  dresses  hanging  on 
hooks,  halberts  and  muskets  propped  up  in  the 
corners,  albums  of  photographs  for  reference 
lying  on  the  tables,  pairs  of  boots  and  buskins 
thrust  away  behind  the  curtains  and  under 
the  valences.  You  felt  convinced  that  every 
drawer  was  packed  so  that  it  could  only  just 
be  induced  to  shut,  and  that  if  you  opened 
the  door  of  a  cupboard  a  crowd  of  imprisoned 
articles  would  come  tumbling  out  helter- 
skelter.  Everything  was  old  and  fusty ; 
tawdry,  and  pretentious  under  its  grime. 
Outside,  the  snow  had  gathered  in  tiny  drifts 
along  the  leadwork  of  the  latticed  windows, 
making  the  rooms  darker  than  they  already 
were,  and  had  heaped  itself  against  the  panes 
two  or  three  inches  above  the  window-sills. 
In  the  mornings  the  frost  left  fern-frond 
patterns  on  the  panes  ;  but  although  it  was 
thus  rendered  almost  impossible  to  see  out, 
the  bright  frost  and  snow  were  a  not  unpleas- 
ant relief,  for  they  were  something  clean  and 
fresh,  something  of  quite  recent  arrival  and 
of  certain  departure,  in  contrast  to  the  con- 
tents of  the  house,  which  had  lain  there  accu- 
mulating for  so  many  years,  and  which  offered 
no  promise  of  a  disturbing  hand  in  the  years 
to  come. 


126        THE  CHRISTMAS  PARTY 

II 

OVER  the  shop  door,  on  to  the  street,  gold 
letters  on  a  black  ground  said :  LYDIA 
PROTHEROE,  Theatrical  Costumier  and  Wig- 
maker.  Lydia  was  not  the  name  by  which 
the  proprietress  of  the  shop  had  been  bap- 
tized, neither  was  Protheroe  the  name  of  her 
parents ;  her  husband's  name  it  could  not 
be  for  she  had  never  had  a  husband.  What 
her  real  name  was  she  had  long  since  pre- 
ferred to  forget,  and  it  was  not  difficult  to  do 
so,  for  as  Lydia  Protheroe  she  had  made  her 
fame,  and  in  the  town  where  she  had  come  as 
a  stranger  there  was  no  one  to  know  her  as 
anything  else.  The  fame  and  the  business 
she  had  built  up  together,  amorously,  jeal- 
ously. It  had  taken  her  forty  years.  Some- 
where back  in  the  eighties  she  saw  herself, 
young,  determined,  deaf  to  the  outcry  of  her 
family ;  a  young  woman  in  a  bombazine 
gown,  with  smooth  bands  of  hair  like  Chris- 
tina Rossetti,  and  arms  folded,  each  hand 
clasping  the  opposite  elbow  ;  she  saw  herself 
thus,  standing  up,  surveying  the  circle  of 
her  relations  as  they  expostulated  around  her. 
They  were  outraged,  they  were  aggrieved ; 
they  were  respectable  people  who  naturally 


THE   CHRISTMAS  PARTY       127 

disapproved  of  the  stage ;  and  here  was 
Lydia — only  to  them  she  had  not  been  Lydia, 
but  Alice — announcing  her  intention  of  set- 
ting up  a  business  which  would  engage  her 
inevitably  in  theatrical  circles.  That  a 
young  woman  should  think  of  setting  up 
business  on  her  own  account  was  bad  enough, 
but  such  a  business  was  an  affront  beyond 
discussion.  She  would  bring  shame  upon 
them  (here  the  personality  of  Lydia  Pro- 
theroe  first  brilliantly  germinated  in  Alice's 
mind).  They  threw  up  their  hands.  Alice, 
who  might  enjoy  all  the  advantages  of  a 
gentlewoman ;  Alice,  who  might  reasonably 
have  looked  for  a  husband,  a  home,  a  family, 
of  her  own ;  Alice,  who  up  to  the  age  of 
twenty-one  had  given  them  scarcely  any 
anxiety,  who  had  been  so  very  genteel,  all 
things  considered — in  spite  of  a  certain  ele- 
ment of  Puckishness  in  her  which  had  peeped 
out  so  very  rarely,  a  certain  disrespect  of 
their  ideals — a  mere  trifle,  a  mere  indication, 
had  they  but  had  the  wit  to  read,  of  what  was 
brewing  beneath. 

And  what  did  she  reply  to  their  remon- 
strance ?  In  what  phrase,  maddening  be- 
cause irrefutable,  did  she  finally  take  refuge  ? 
That  she  was  of  age. 


128        THE   CHRISTMAS  PARTY 

It  was  true.  She  was  twenty-one,  and  she 
had  a  thousand  pounds  left  her  by  her  grand- 
father. She  could  snap  her  fingers  at  them 
all  if  she  chose.  She  did  not  literally  snap 
her  fingers  ;  she  was  gentle  and  regretful, 
she  said  she  did  not  wish  to  cut  herself  adrift 
from  her  family,  and  saw  no  reason  why  they 
should  cut  themselves  adrift  from  her.  She 
would  not  bring  their  name  into  disrepute. 
She  would  trade  under  another  name ;  she 
would  cease  to  be  Alice  Jennings,  she  would 
become  Lydia  Protheroe.  Secretly  she  was 
elated  to  escape  from  a  name  of  whose 
homeliness  she  had  always  been  ashamed, 
but  this  she  was  careful  not  to  betray  to  her 
family ;  to  her  family  she  made  the  announce- 
ment with  an  air  of  sacrifice.  Since  they 
were  humiliated  by  her,  and  by  the  trade 
she  had  chosen,  she  would  go  away ;  she 
would  conceal  her  identity  in  a  distant  town. 
No  ;  she  shook  her  smooth  head  in  answer  to 
their  protestations ;  what  she  had  declared 
she  would  carry  out ;  they  should  never  say 
they  had  cause  to  blush  whenever  they  opened 
a  theatre  programme.  "  Wigs  by  Jennings." 
That  should  not  offend  their  eyes.  "  Wigs 
by  Protheroe,"  and  they  could  sit  snugly  in 
their  stalls,  being  Jennings,  looking  Jennings  ; 


THE  CHRISTMAS  PARTY       129 

connected  with  the  stage  in  any  way  ?  oh 
dear,  no!  Let  them  only  think  kindly  of 
her  in  her  lonely  and  distant — yes,  distant — 
struggles.  No  doubt  Miss  Protheroe  would 
find  it  hard  at  first,  unfriended  and  unsup- 
ported ;  but  armed  with  her  thousand  pounds 
she  would  survive  the  first  reverses ;  and 
adversity  was  good  for  the  character.  Indeed, 
as  she  talked,  always  gentle  and  regretful, 
but  perfectly  obdurate,  she  felt  her  character 
stiffening  under  the  test  of  this  first  adversity. 
The  Presbyterian  that  was  in  her,  as  it  was  in 
all  her  relatives,  welcomed  in  its  austere  and 
cheerless  fashion  this  trial  that  made  a  de- 
mand upon  her  endurance.  She  enjoyed  the 
self-satisfaction  of  the  martyr.  And  yet, 
secretly,  all  the  while,  a  little  voice  gibed  at 
hor  "  Hypocrite!  "  She  knew  her  hypocrisy 
because,  in  spite  of  her  affectation  of  martyr- 
dom, she  was  rejoicing  in  her  new  isolation. 
She  knew  that  she  would  embark  on  her 
adventure  with  a  greater  gusto  since  she  was 
not  to  embark  on  it  with  the  approval  of  her 
family.  It  was  all  very  well  for  her  to  appeal 
to  their  sympathy  with  poor  Miss  Protheroe, 
unfriended  and  unsupported ;  the  phrase 
sounded  well,  but  the  truth  was  that  she 
wanted  neither  their  friendship  nor  their 


130        THE   CHRISTMAS  PARTY 

support.  "  I  want  to  get  away  from  all  this," 
she  cried  suddenly  and  despairingly.  She 
wanted  independence  ;  she  wanted  the  fight. 
She  would  have  been  defrauded  of  both,  by 
the  lap  of  a  comfortable  middle-class  family 
spread  out  behind  her  to  receive  her  if  she 
fell.  Backed  up  by  her  family,  she  would 
have  felt  herself  backed  up  by  the  whole  of 
the  English  middle-class,  cushioned,  solid  in 
the  consciousness  of  its  homogeneity  and 
resources,  an  enormous  family  of  Jennings, 
swarming  in  every  town  and  with  its  place  of 
assembly  in  every  town-hall,  inimical  to  the 
exotic,  mistrustful  of  the  new,  tenacious  of 
the  conventions  that  were  as  cement  to  its 
masonry ;  a  class  sagacious  and  shrewd, 
nicely  knowing  safety  from  danger,  and 
knowing,  above  all,  its  own  mind,  since  noth- 
ing was  ever  admitted  to  that  mind  to  which 
it  could  not  immediately  affix  a  label.  This 
was  the  class  to  whose  protection  Alice 
Jennings  had  the  birthright  now  rejected 
by  Lydia  Protheroe.  She  marvelled  how  she 
could  have  endured  it  for  so  many  years. 
She  made  a  gesture  as  she  finally  rejected  it ; 
the  hands  that  had  been  clasping  the  elbows 
were  unloosed,  and  the  right  hand  tossed  up 
in  a  gesture  definitely  histrionic,  as  one  who 


THE  CHRISTMAS  PARTY       131 

tosses  a  feather  to  the  wind.  Her  family  had 
almost  groaned  when  they  saw  it,  for  they 
recognized  it  as  a  defiance,  a  symbol  and  an 
enemy.  She  stood  there,  in  their  midst, 
a  slim  revolutionary,  not  visibly  tremulous, 
and  although  her  hair  still  lay  in  those  sleek 
bands  plastered  down  on  her  forehead,  they 
felt  that  the  moment  was  near  at  hand  when 
they  would  cease  to  be  sleek  and  would  be- 
come rumpled ;  even  curly ;  even  puffed 
out ;  and  that  the  snuff-coloured  bombazine 
of  her  gown  would  become  metamorphosed 
into  some  gaudy  intolerable  fustian.  They 
looked  at  her  as  though  they  were  looking 
their  last.  They  uttered  a  preliminary  cau- 
tion ;  she  smiled.  Seeing  her  smile,  they 
ceased  the  expostulations  which  had  been 
wrung  from  them  in  their  first  dismay  ;  they 
gathered  themselves  up  in  dignity  and  sor- 
row ;  they  said  that  since  nothing  would  turn 
her  from  this  reckless,  this  unbecoming,  this 
...  in  short,  this  idea,  and  that  since  she 
was  of  age,  as  she  had  not  scrupled  to  remind 
them,  she  must,  they  supposed,  be  allowed 
to  follow  her  own  course.  But  let  her  not 
expect  to  return  to  them  when  the  conse- 
quences of  her  folly  were  heavy  upon  her. 
Let  her  not  (it  was  her  father  who  enunciated 


132        THE   CHRISTMAS  PARTY 

this  figure  of  speech,  shaking  his  finger  solemn- 
ly at  her),  let  her  not  hope  to  exchange  for 
the  glare  of  the  lamplight  the  oil-lamp  of  the 
warm  parlour  of  home.  Once  an  outcast 
she  should  remain  an  outcast  for  ever.  She 
had  a  sudden  attack  of  panic  as  these  im- 
pressive words  boomed  upon  her  ears.  She 
saw  herself  alone  in  a  deserted  theatre,  the 
holland  covers  over  the  stalls,  the  lights 
turned  out,  and  the  great  pit  of  the  stage 
yawning  at  her  in  front  of  the  gaunt  skeleton 
of  the  scenery  ;  and  simultaneously  she  saw 
the  circle  of  her  family — who  were,  after  all, 
familiar,  even  if  not  particularly  enlivening — 
seated  at  their  snug  evening  tasks  in  the  glow 
of  that  oil-lamp  of  which  her  father  had 
reminded  her.  She  came  near  to  weakening  ; 
she  knew  that  if  she  held  out  her  hands  to 
them,  even  now,  they  would  receive  her  again 
into  their  bosom — but  how  they  would  cackle 
over  her !  they  would  pat  her  kindly  ;  they 
would  talk  of  her  having  come  to  her  senses, 
of  being  once  more  their  little  Alice  ;  and 
this  her  pride  would  not  endure.  She  dis- 
covered that  she  could  tolerate  patronage 
even  less  than  security  ;  and  for  the  rest  of 
her  days,  if  she  capitulated  now,  she  would 
be  at  the  mercy  of  her  family.  She  would 


THE   CHRISTMAS   PARTY       133 

be  among  them  on  sufferance.  Sooner  any 
loneliness,  any  quandary,  sooner  even  starva- 
tion, than  shelter  on  such  terms.  Inclining 
her  head,  she  accepted  her  ostracism  without 
a  protest.  As  soon  as  she  had  accepted 
it — as  soon,  that  is,  as  the  worst  had  been 
definitely  spoken  and  she  had  definitely  sur- 
vived it — she*  felt  the  sense  of  her  liberty 
flooding  over  her.  Her  very  name  dropped 
from  her  like  a  piece  of  old  skin.  She  be- 
came that  unique  being,  the  person  who  has 
no  relations.  Alice  Jennings  had  had  rela- 
tions, Lydia  Protheroe  had  none,  Lydia 
Protheroe  had  never  even  had  a  mother. 
Independence  could  scarcely  go  further.  She 
swept  one  last  slow  look  around  their  circle, 
and  passed  out  of  the  room. 

Ill 

AFTER  she  had  left  them — for  she  had  gone 
then  and  there,  in  her  own  phrase,  "  out  into 
the  night" — they  had  uttered,  when  they 
recovered  a  little  from  their  consternation, 
all  the  things  they  might  have  been  expected 
to  utter.  They  were  very  hot  and  angry. 
Her  father,  a  stout  man,  had  blown  out  his 
cheeks,  tugged  at  his  whiskers  and  pro- 


134        THE   CHRISTMAS  PARTY 

nounced,  "  No  daughter  of  mine."  It  was 
an  excommunication.  "  The  ingratitude.  To 
think  that  ever  .  .  ."  her  mother  had  whim- 
pered. Her  aunt,  who  was  elderly,  frail,  and 
timorous,  had  bleated,  "  Oh,  and  to  think 
of  all  the  horrible  men  in  the  world."  Her 
brother,  a  severely  good  young  man,  had 
said,  "  All  I  ask,  father,  and  you,  too,  mother, 
is  that  I  may  NEVER  hear  her  name  again," 
and  his  wife,  who  was  like  a  little  brown  wren, 
his  mere  echo,  had  said,  "  Oh,  dear,  it  does 
seem  hard,  doesn't  it?  but  Bertie  is  always 
right  about  these  things." 

Her  sister,  who  was  engaged,  summed  up 
their  main  unspoken  thought  as  she  said 
fretfully  and  anxiously,  "  But  what  are  we  to 
say  to  people  ?  " 

IV 

LYDIA  PROTHEROE,  whose  mind  worked 
instinctively  in  terms  of  drama,  always  saw 
herself  afterwards,  in  retrospect,  standing 
alone  in  the  rain  on  the  pavement  outside 
her  father's  house  wondering  where  she  should 
go.  She  had  not  expected  events  to  be  so 
rapid  or  so  complete.  She  had  foreseen  long 
weeks  of  argument,  during  which  her  family 
would  slowly  be  worn  down  to  some  reluctant 


THE  CHRISTMAS  PARTY       135 

compromise,  and  although  this  had  not  been 
much  to  her  satisfaction  as  a  prospect,  she  had 
resigned  herself  to  hope  for  nothing  more. 
She  found  herself  now,  triumphant  indeed, 
but  a  little  disconcerted,  with  no  luggage  and 
too  much  pride  to  slip  into  the  house  again 
in  order  to  pack.  No  doubt  they  counted 
on  her  doing  so ;  no  doubt  their  ultimatum 
had  been  but  bluff.  Probably  they  were 
even  now  sitting  expectant,  waiting  to  hear 
her  key  in  the  door,  waiting  to  rush  out  and 
overwhelm  her  in  the  passage,  and  to  pull  her 
in  with  cries  of  "  Alice,  dear,  we  didn't  mean 
it ! "  Let  them  wait !  She  started  down  the 
wet  street,  where  the  gas-lamps  shone  reflec- 
ted in  the  roadway,  and  as  she  went  she  turned 
up  the  collar  of  the  overcoat  she  had  snatched 
off  the  row  of  hooks  in  the  passage,  for  the 
rain  was  dripping  into  her  neck.  It  then 
occurred  to  her  that  the  overcoat  was  not 
her  own.  She  had  taken  her  own  hat,  cram- 
ming it  down  as  far  as  her  eyebrows  ;  but  she 
had  got  the  wrong  coat.  She  investigated  it : 
it  was  her  brother's — Bertie's.  This  seemed 
to  her  to  be  an  extremely  good  joke — and 
Bertie,  too,  was  always  so  particular  about 
his  things.  She  felt  quite  disproportionately 
heartened  by  this  occurrence,  and  as  she  thrust 


136        THE  CHRISTMAS  PARTY 

her  hands  into  the  pockets  to  keep  them  dry 
she  pretended  to  herself  that  she  was  a  man, 
to  give  herself  additional  courage  ;  she  even 
affected  a  masculine  stride,  and  whispered  to 
herself,  "Lydia  Pr other oe  .  .  .  Richard  Pro- 
theroe  .  .  .  who  am  I  ?  "  and  she  skipped 
two  or  three  paces  in  her  excitement  and 
trepidation.  There  was  a  pipe  in  the  pocket 
of  the  coat ;  she  curved  her  fingers  round  its 
little  friendly  bowl,  and  for  a  minute  she 
even  took  it  out  and  stuck  it  in  her  mouth, 
sucking  at  it  as  she  had  seen  Bertie  do,  but 
almost  immediately  she  slipped  it  back  again 
with  a  guilty  air  and  the  sense  of  having  done 
something  inordinately  daring,  grotesque, 
and  improper.  The  extravagance  of  her 
adventure  was  indeed  going  to  her  head. 
She  had  been  for  so  long  enveloped  in  the 
cotton- wool  of  her  family  that  to  be  free  of 
it  was,  simply,  incredible.  No  father,  no 
mother,  no  Bertie,  to  madden  her  with  their 
injunctions  and  their  restrictions.  She  skip- 
ped again,  another  two  or  three  paces.  But 
in  the  meantime  she  had  no  idea  of  where  she 
was  going  or  of  what  she  meant  to  do.  This 
irresponsibility  was  all  very  well,  this  release 
very  delightful,  but  from  Lydia  Protheroe 
masquerading  down  a  dark  wet  street  in  her 


THE  CHRISTMAS  PARTY       137 

brother's  overcoat,  to  Lydia  Pr other oe  the 
proprietress  of  a  flourishing  theatrical  busi- 
ness, with  her  name  over  the  door  and  fat 
ledgers  on  her  desk,  was  a  far  cry ;  and  she 
had  nowhere  to  sleep  that  night. 

She  turned  towards  the  station.  Where 
did  the  next  train  go  to  ?  There  would  she 
go,  even  if  it  carried  her  to  Wick  or  Thurso. 
Since  she  had  abjured  all  the  common  pru- 
dences, she  would  allow  fate  to  decide  for 
her  hap-hazard  :  fate  was  a  Bohemian,  if 
ever  there  was  one,  overthrowing  careful 
plans  and  disregarding  probabilities — a  ran- 
dom deity  which  must  henceforth  be  her  guide. 
Before  very  long,  she  reflected,  scoffing,  though 
a  little  uncertainly,  at  herself  meanwhile,  she 
would  be  ordering  her  life  by  the  spin  of  a 
coin  or  the  conjunction  of  the  planets,  since 
here  she  was  already,  with  not  ten  minutes 
of  liberty  behind  her,  resigning  her  destina- 
tion into  the  keeping  of  Bradshaw.  She 
hurried  on  towards  the  station,  huddled 
inside  the  coat  that  was  much  too  big  for 
her,  frightened  but  indomitable :  still  pre- 
tending to  herself  that  she  was  a  man — a 
boy,  rather,  and  such  phrases  as  "  He  ran 
away  to  sea  "  kept  flitting  through  her  mind, 
inconsequent  but  vaguely  inspiriting — and 


138        THE   CHRISTMAS    PARTY 

although  she  was  thereby  transporting  her- 
self into  a  world  of  pretence,  she  could  not 
help  feeling,  with  exultation,  that  she  had 
discarded  for  ever  the  world  of  true  pretence, 
of  casuistry  and  circumspection,  growing 
richer,  more  emancipated  by  the  exchange. 
Presently  she  stood  upon  the  railway  bridge, 
looking  down  upon  the  station,  an  etching 
in  silver-point  never  by  her  forgotten.  The 
rails  were  lines  of  polished  silver,  the  low 
black  sheds  of  the  station  were  spanned  by 
girders  against  a  black  and  silver  sky.  Only 
a  few  yellow  lights  gave  colour ;  and,  high 
up,  the  light  of  a  signal,  like  a  high  and 
isolated  ruby,  burned  deep  upon  the  wrack 
of  the  silver-rifted  clouds. 


THE  difficulties  of  life  had  not  sobered  her. 
On  the  contrary,  as  she  disencumbered 
herself  more  and  more  from  the  oppression 
of  the  traditions  in  which  she  had  been 
brought  up,  her  mettle  had  risen  with  pro- 
portionate buoyancy.  She  soared,  as  the 
weights  dropped  from  her.  She  fled  from 
these  realities  with  increasing  determination 
into  the  realms  of  make-believe.  In  her 


THE  CHRISTMAS  PARTY       139 

worst  moments — for  there  had  been  bad  mo- 
ments, hours  in  her  career  which  would  have 
seemed  to  anyone  else  unpromisingly  dark, 
hours  when  dishonesty  saddened  and  failure 
discouraged  her — she  could  always  say  to 
herself,  "  I  don't  exist  at  all.  There's  no 
such  person  as  Lydia  Protheroe."  And  she 
thought  of  all  the  parish  ledgers,  serious  and 
civic,  in  which  the  birth,  baptism,  and  other 
fails  et  gestes  of  Lydia  Protheroe  ought  pro- 
perly to  be  recorded,  and  from  which  Lydia 
Protheroe  was  so  gratifyingly  absent.  This 
habit  of  mind  grew  upon  her,  until  every 
suggestion  of  her  actual  existence  as  a  citizen 
and  a  ratepayer  was  enough  to  throw  her 
into  a  state  of  indignation.  Who  was  Lydia 
Protheroe,  that  unsubstantial  and  fantastic 
being,  that  she  should  be  bound  down  to  the 
orthodoxy  of  an  urban  district  council  form 
for  the  payment  of  property-tax  or  house- 
duty  ?  that  she  should  be  asked  to  account 
for  her  income  and  to  contribute  a  shilling 
in  the  pound  towards  the  upkeep  of  her 
country  ?  she  who  had  no  country,  no 
status  ?  she  who  was  so  impudently  and 
audaciously  a  myth  ?  It  was  manifestly 
impossible  to  induce  the  tax-collectors  to  take 
this  view.  It  would  have  entailed,  moreover, 
K 


140       THE  CHRISTMAS  PARTY 

the  betrayal  of  Lydia  Protheroe's  secret,  and 
the  asking  of  questions  leading  inevitably  to 
the  resurrection  of  Alice  Jennings.  She 
consoled  herself,  therefore,  in  the  midst  of  her 
mortification  as  she  filled  in  her  forms  (never 
until  "  third  application  "  glared  across  the 
top  of  the  paper),  by  reflecting  that  she  was 
playing  a  trick  on  the  authorities  with  her 
tongue  well  thrust  into  her  cheek.  But 
there  was  nothing  she  would  not  do  to  evade 
the  census  returns,  when  they  came  round  in 
1891,  and  again  in  1901,  and  again  in  1911. 

VI 

HER  family  had  been  quite  wrong  when  they 
predicted  a  change  in  her  appearance.  The 
sleek  brown  bands  remained  the  same,  the 
snuff-coloured  gown,  though  of  necessity 
every  few  years  it  had  to  be  replaced  by  a 
successor,  to  outward  appearance  was  unal- 
tered. Lydia  Protheroe,  inheriting  an  odd 
and  incongruous  remnant  of  Presbyterianism 
from  the  late  Alice  Jennings,  considered 
freedom  of  the  spirit  of  more  consequence 
than  eccentricity  of  garb.  Therefore,  her 
external  sobriety  gave  no  hint  of  her  internal 
flamboyance.  People  used  to  remark  that 


THE  CHRISTMAS  PARTY       141 

the  only  thing  in  the  shop  devoid  of  all  fan- 
tasy was  the  proprietor  behind  the  counter. 
"  Proper  Pr other oe  "  they  called  her,  and 
similar  names.  But  they  had  to  admit  her 
supremacy  on  all  questions  of  travesty.  She 
had  more  than  the  mere  technical,  the  mere 
historical,  knowledge  ;  she  had  a  flair  and 
an  imagination  which  surprised  and  con- 
vinced, unarguably.  Without  a  trace  of 
enthusiasm  she  issued  her  directions,  coldly 
pointing  with  a  ladylike  forefinger,  and  when 
the  finger  was  not  in  use  she  resumed  that 
characteristic,  tight  little  attitude,  which  had 
remained  with  her,  of  clasping  her  elbows 
with  the  opposite  hand,  while  she  watched 
her  directions  slavishly  carried  out.  Her 
customers  wondered  whether  she  was  ever 
gratified  by  her  complete  success.  If  so, 
she  never  betrayed  it.  The  utmost  approval 
that  she  was  known  to  bestow,  was  a  chilly 
"  That  will  do."  And  yet,  after  her  forty 
years  of  labour,  she  was  a  recognized  author- 
ity in  her  profession ;  hidden  away  in  her 
provincial  town,  she  was  the  court  of  appeal 
in  all  problems  connected  with  her  trade,  an 
arbitrator  to  whom  even  London  had  recourse. 
People  said  that  as  time  went  on  she  became 
grimmer  and  more  intimidating.  Certainly 


142        THE  CHRISTMAS   PARTY 

she  became  more  self-contained,  and  none 
knew  what  passed  beneath  the  sleek  brown 
bands  in  their  ^invariable  neatness,  or  behind 
the  gown  that  buttoned,  like  a  uniform, 
down  the  front.  Something  of  a  legend 
grew  up  around  the  personality  of  Lydia 
Protheroe.  It  became  the  fashion  for  stran- 
gers in  the  town  to  pay  a  visit  to  the  shop, 
buying  a  box  of  powder  or  a  stick  of  lip-salve 
to  provide  themselves  with  an  excuse,  while 
they  covertly  observed  the  ambiguous  gentle- 
woman. The  legend  gradually  became  en- 
hanced by  scraps  of  gossip  that  crept  into 
circulation  about  Lydia  Protheroe.  It  was 
known  in  the  town  that  she  no  longer  allowed 
her  solitary  servant  to  sleep  in  the  house,  but 
that  at  six  o'clock  punctually,  when  the  staff 
of  the  shop,  consisting  of  three,  left  the  pre- 
mises, the  servant-girl  went  with  them.  The 
bell  over  the  door  would  tinkle  for  the  last 
time  of  the  day,  the  three  assistants,  turning 
up  their  collars  or  burying  their  hands  in  their 
muffs,  would  issue  out  one  by  one  into  the 
street,  the  servant-girl  bringing  up  the  rear  ; 
three  "Good-night,  Miss  Protheroe  "'s 
would  be  rapped  out,  and  one  "  Good-night, 
miss,"  from  the  servant,  always  scared  and 
never  in  the  least  devoted ;  and  the  door 


THE   CHRISTMAS  PARTY       143 

would  be  shut  behind  them,  and  there  would 
be  the  sound  of  the  key  turning  in  the  lock. 

VII 

DARKNESS  and  silence  then  descended  on  the 
house.  In  one  of  the  upper  rooms  a  light 
would  appear  behind  the  blind  ;  a  light  which 
sometimes  moved  from  room  to  room,  as 
though  someone  were  carrying  it  about ;  and 
it  had  been  seen,  also,  in  the  shop  through 
the  chinks  of  the  shutters.  But,  although 
the  curious  had  often  lingered  round  the  door, 
no  one  had  ever  been  seen  to  emerge  after 
dark. 

The  face  of  the  house  and  the  closed  door 
kept  their  counsel  as  to  whatever  might  be 
enacted  behind  them.  All  that  the  town 
ever  knew  was  that  evening  after  evening 
Lydia  Protheroe  was  undisturbed  at  her  own 
occupations,  and  although  it  was  improbable 
to  imagine  that  occupations  otherwise  than 
innocent  could  engage  the  leisure  of  so  decent 
and  correct  a  lady,  there  grew  up,  neverthe- 
less, an  impression  of  some  mischievous  back- 
ground to  the  frontage  of  honest  trade  which 
everyone  was  allowed  to  see. 

Why  did  she  remain  in  this  insignificant 


144        THE   CHRISTMAS  PARTY 

town,  she  who  both  by  wealth  and  repute 
was  amply  justified  to  move  herself  and  her 
chattels  to  London?  Why  had  she  chosen 
this  ancient  house,  with  its  latticed  windows 
and  overhanging  gables  in  a  narrow  side- 
street,  rather  than  one  of  the  new  buildings 
in  the  main  street,  where  were  the  other 
shops  that,  unashamed,  did  not  have  to  tuck 
themselves  away  ?  Why  did  she  sleep  there 
alone  at  nights,  among  her  oddments  that 
were  enough,  when  the  mystery  of  dusk  began 
to  shroud  them,  to  give  an  ordinary  Christian 
the  shivers  ?  Why  did  she  hold  herself  so 
frigidly  aloof  from  the  conviviality  of  the 
town?  Perfectly  civil  always,  they  would 
say  that  much  for  her  ;  and  quite  the  lady, 
they  would  say  that  too.  And  good  to  the 
poor  ;  oh,  absurdly !  That  was  only  another 
one  of  the  grievances  they  had  against  her  : 
she  spoilt  the  market  for  everybody  else. 
But  why — the  questions  would  begin  again. 
There  was  a  mutter  of  innuendo ;  and  yet, 
when  they  were  pinned  down  to  it,  there  was 
not  one  of  her  fellow  townsmen  who  could 
say  that  she  was  otherwise  than  harmless. 
And  they  were  all  afraid  of  her,  although  she 
never  said  a  -  sharp  word ;  and  they  all 
respected  her,  grudgingly,  and  admitted  her 


THE  CHRISTMAS  PARTY       145 

rigid  integrity.  But  when  these  admissions 
had  been  extracted  from  them,  the  questions 
and  the  mutter  would  begin  again. 

Nobody  knew  whether  she  herself  was 
aware  of  them  ;  if  she  was,  then  she  treated 
them  with  complete  indifference.  In  point 
of  fact,  her  mental  isolation  was  such  that  she 
had  long  since  ceased  to  bother  her  head  about 
what  people  might  say  or  might  leave  unsaid  ; 
she  imagined  herself  encased  in  armour  like 
the  knight  who  stood  eternally  on  the  lowest 
step  of  her  stair.  She  was  happy.  If  she 
was  forbidding,  it  was  because  she  wanted 
no  intimacy  ;  she  wanted  to  keep  her  happi- 
ness to  herself.  There  were  moments  when 
she  even  resented  the  intrusion  of  customers 
into  her  shop,  and  the  presence  of  the  three 
assistants  and  the  servant,  but  she  tried  to 
be  severe  with  herself  over  this  crotchet. 
Generally  her  severity  was  successful ;  but 
sometimes  her  resentment  gained  the  upper 
hand,  and  on  those  occasions  she  would 
observe  her  hirelings  with  real  dislike,  angry 
with  them  because  they,  poor  souls,  went 
innocently  on  with  their  business,  turning 
over  the  wares  in  the  course  of  serving  cus- 
tomers, until  Miss  Protheroe,  unable  longer 
to  endure  the  sight  of  their  hands  fumbling 


146       THE   CHRISTMAS   PARTY 

among  the  objects  got  together  by  her  and  so 
dear  to  her  heart,  descended  upon  them  from 
behind  the  counting- desk  and  brushed  them 
aside,  not  rudely,  for  Miss  Protheroe  was 
never  rude,  but  with  a  thin  disdain  that  was 
twice  as  humiliating.  For  years  she  was 
deeply  ashamed  after  these  manifestations; 
then  she  grew  to  be  less  ashamed,  and 
they  increased  in  frequency.  She  became, 
coldly,  more  autocratic ;  would  not  have 
anything  touched  without  her  permission  ; 
received  any  comment  with  a  scornful 
disapproval  that  would  not  permit  her 
to  answer.  She  was  happy,  but  she  was 
only  truly  and  completely  happy  after  six 
o'clock,  when  she  had  turned  the  key  in  the 
lock  and  was  left  alone  in  the  house. 

And  yet  she  had  a  weakness,  an  inconsis- 
tency ;  she  fretted  over  the  defection  of  her 
family. 

It  was  absurd.  She  wanted  independence, 
and  she  had  got  it,  full  measure,  pressed  down 
and  running  over.  She  had  been  glad.  She 
had  been  unobserved,  left  alone  to  do  the 
little  daring,  extravagant  things  which  bub- 
bled up  so  surprisingly  from  beneath  that 
ladylike  exterior,  little  things  like  pretending 
she  was  a  boy  in  her  brother's  overcoat,  and 


THE  CHRISTMAS   PARTY       147 

drawing  his  pipe  from  the  pocket  to  put  it 
between  her  teeth.  She  had  always  done 
them  surreptitiously,  even  though  she  knew 
she  was  quite  alone.  Sometimes  she  had 
made  up  her  face  with  her  own  grease-paints, 
and,  to  the  light  of  her  candle,  minced  round 
the  shop  in  a  wig  and  a  bustle.  These  were 
not  things  she  would  have  had  the  courage 
to  do  with  her  family  in  the  neighbourhood. 
She  had  believed  that  she  would  shed  her 
family  quite  lightly,  blissfully,  and  for  some 
time  she  had  even  deluded  herself  into  the 
conviction  that  this  was  so.  Then  she  was 
forced  to  the  realization  that  their  conduct 
had,  in  fact,  sunk  very  deeply  into  the  tender 
parts  of  her  being.  This  realization  took  a 
long  time  to  come.  She  had  her  first  mis- 
givings when  she  found  that  she  could  not 
think  of  them  without  a  surge  of  anger 
uneasily  allied  to  a  surge  of  pain.  Their 
silence  had  surprised  her  extremely.  Daily 
she  had  expected  to  have  some  news  of  them  ; 
she  had  expected  that  they  would  trace  her 
out — nothing  easier — and  many  times  in  her 
mind  she  rehearsed  the  scene  when  one  of 
their  number,  probably  Bertie,  would  appear 
in  the  doorway  of  the  room,  and  turn  by 
turn,  menacing,  cajoling,  and  alarmed,  would 


148       THE  CHRISTMAS  PARTY 

try  to  persuade  her  to  return.  These  per- 
suasions she  would  reject ;  of  that  she  had 
been  fully  determined.  It  was  not  that  she 
hankered  after  forgiveness  and  the  evening 
circle  round  the  lamp ;  it  was  not  that  she 
had  desired  the  role  of  the  prodigal  child, 
picturesque  and  doubly  precious  after  her 
escapade  ;  no,  it  was  not  that  she  had  wanted 
her  family,  but  rather  that  she  had  wanted 
her  family  to  want  her.  And  not  that  alone. 
It  was  not,  as  she  told  herself  plaintively, 
merely  the  petty,  personal  grievance  that 
had  hurt  her.  It  was  a  wider,  deeper 
injury.  She  despised  them — she  was  com- 
pelled to  despise  them — because  of  their 
miserable  cautiousness,  their  rejection  of 
her,  who  was  of  their  own  blood,  when  she 
became  a  danger  to  their  respectability.  How 
politic  they  had  been!  how  sage!  She 
hated  them  because  they  had  made  her 
ashamed  of  them.  They  had  become,  to  her, 
symbolic  of  that  wary,  chary  majority  whose 
enemy  she  was. 

For  the  appearance  of  Bertie,  however, 
she  had  waited  in  vain.  They  had  made  no 
attempt  to  retrieve  her,  nothing  to  show  that 
they  cared  whether  she  lived  or  died,  starved 
or  prospered.  Her  expectation  had  turned 


THE   CHRISTMAS   PARTY       149 

to  surprise,  surprise  to  indignation.  When 
it  had  finally  become  quite  clear  that  they 
intended  to  take  no  steps  towards  getting 
her  back,  she  accepted  their  indifference  with 
a  shrug  that  she  tried  to  make  equally 
indifferent.  But  the  sore  had  remained ; 
more,  it  had  eaten  its  way  down  into  her. 
There  was  no  affection  left  now  ;  but  before 
she  died  she  would  be  even  with  them.  It 
was  not  a  sore  that  impaired  her  happiness. 
Rather  she  nursed  it,  as  she  nursed  all  the 
secrets  of  her  inner  life ;  and  it  provided  an 
incentive,  if  she  had  needed  one,  a  sort  of 
aim  and  raison  ffetre.  Not  a  day  passed 
but  she  wondered  whether  they  heard  the 
name  of  the  celebrated  Lydia  Protheroe, 
and  connected  it  with  that  of  the  little 
Alice  they  had  so  improvidently  driven  from 
their  midst.  She  hoped  so ;  spitefully  she 
hoped  so.  She  even  contemplated  going  to 
London,  where  her  reputation  would  widen 
with  more  chance  of  reaching  their  ears ; 
but  she  could  not  uproot  herself  from  her  old 
clandestine  house.  She  loved  it,  for  the 
sake  of  six  o'clock  and  the  turning  of  the  key 
in  the  lock. 

So  she  lived  with  her  two  passionate  se- 
crets side  by  side  :  her  vindictiveness  and  her 


150       THE   CHRISTMAS  PARTY 

absorption  in  the  unreality  of  her  own  exis- 
tence. 

The  one  intensified  the  other.  An  outcast 
from  the  auspices  of  middle-class  propriety, 
she  was  driven  into  the  refuge  of  her  queer 
fantastic  world.  She  sought  that  refuge 
fanatically,  it  was  a  facet  of  her  vindictiveness. 
From  out  of  that  world  of  shadows  she  should, 
some  day,  thrust  the  rapier  of  mischief  into 
the  paunch  of  their  gross  solidity.  It  was  all 
a  little  confused  in  her  mind.  But  she  felt 
that  she  owned,  by  right  of  citizenship — 
unshared  citizenship,  and  consequent  sove- 
reignty, a  sovereignty  like  that  of  Adam  in 
Eden — she  felt  that  she  owned  those  privi- 
leges which  had  always  given  to  the  hero  of 
mythical  combat  an  advantage  so  prepon- 
deratingly  unfair  and  so  divine  :  the  cap 
of  invisibility,  the  armour  that  no  sword 
could  pierce,  the  sword  that  could  pierce  all 
armour,  the  winged  shoes,  the  nightingale  for 
counsellor,  the  philtre  of  oblivion,  the  mirror 
of  prophecy.  And  at  night,  flitting  round 
her  house  or  down  into  her  shop,  to  the  echo 
of  her  own  low  laughter,  now  masked,  now 
sandalled,  now  casqued  within  a  head  incon- 
gruous to  the  body  and  more  incongruous  to 
the  feet,  like  the  unfolding  in  a  game  of 


THE  CHRISTMAS  PARTY       151 

drawing  Consequences,  she  knew  herself 
elusive,  evanescent,  protean. 

But  no  one  must  know,  no  one  must  sus- 
pect. 

VIII 

IT  was  on  an  evening  in  December  that 
Bertie's  letter  came.  She  was  alone  in  the 
shop  when  she  heard  the  click  of  the  letter- 
box, and,  getting  the  letter  out,  she  instantly 
recognized  the  writing,  and  her  heart,  for  a 
second,  ceased  to  beat.  She  stood  holding 
the  letter,  incredulous,  and  strangely  afraid. 
Without  knowing  in  exactly  what  way  the 
opportunity  would  come  to  her,  she  had 
never  for  one  instant  doubted  that  somehow 
or  other  it  would  come.  She  tore  the  flap 
and  read  : 

"  MY  DEAR  ALICE, — 

"It  is  now  some  forty  years  since  that 
terrible  and  painful  scene  which  ended  in 
our  separation,  and  I  think  you  will  agree 
with  me  that  so  many  years  should  have 
sufficed  to  heal  our  differences.  We  are 
both,  my  dear  sister,  past  the  prime  of  our 
life,  and  it  is  my  earnest  wish  (as  I  trust  it 
may  be  yours  also)  that  a  reconciliation 
should  sweeten  the  advent  of  old  age.  I 


152       THE   CHRISTMAS  PARTY 

write,  therefore,  to  propose  that  we  take 
advantage  of  this  season  of  good- will  to  bury 
the  feud  which  has  so  long  severed  us.  Our 
father  and  mother,  as  you  must  be  well  aware, 
have  long  since  gone  to  their  rest ;  but  I 
remain  (an  old  fellow  now),  and  my  dear  wife 
and  Emily  and  her  husband.  Would  you 
give  us  a  welcome  if  we  came  to  visit  you  this 
Christmas-tide  ?  I  will  add  no  entreaty,  but 
leave  the  rest  to  the  dictates  of  your  heart. — 
Your  brother,  "  ALBERT." 

She  recognized  Bertie's  style  ;  he  had  al- 
ways been  partial  to  books.  She  was  con- 
vulsed by  an  inward  laughter.  So  they  had 
got  wind  of  her  riches!  So  they  had  an  eye 
on  her  will!  So  her  prosperity  might  sanc- 
tion, at  last,  her  discreditable  trade !  Would 
she  welcome  them,  indeed  ?  They  should 
see  how  she  would  welcome  them.  Bertie, 
his  wife,  Emily,  her  husband — that  would 
make  four.  She  would  have  them  all.  There 
was  plenty  of  room,  fortunately,  in  the  old 
house  upstairs.  She  would  have  them  on 
Christmas-eve.  For  a  clear  day,  Christmas- 
day,  she  would  have  them  to  herself ;  all  to 
herself !  Her  mind  worked  rapidly.  She  sat 
perched  on  a  stool  beside  the  counter,  nibbling 


THE  CHRISTMAS  PARTY       153 

the  tips  of  her  fingers  and  making  her  plans. 
Her  excitement  was  such  that  she  found  it 
difficult  to  keep  the  plans  in  her  head  conse- 
cutive ;  but  she  knew  it  was  urgent  that  she 
should  do  so ;  she  grabbed  back  her  inten- 
tions as  they  tried  to  evade  her.  The  enve- 
lope— Bertie  had  addressed  her  as  "  Miss 
Lydia  Protheroe."  He  must  have  winced 
as  he  saw  himself  confronted  by  the  necessity 
of  writing  that  name.  Bertie  must  be  sixty- 
five  now ;  Emily  must  be  fifty-nine.  So 
Emily  had  married — the  little  sister ;  she 
had  always  been  a  sly,  mercenary  little  thing. 
Emily,  Bertie,  Bertie's  wife — they  all  rushed 
back  to  her  in  their  old  familiarity.  Bertie 
must  have  grown  very  like  his  father ;  she 
hated  the  implication  of  continuance.  Natura 
il  fece,  e  poi  roppe  la  stampa ;  that  was  not 
the  case  with  people  like  her  father  and  Ber- 
tie. They  were  always  the  same.  Their 
moral  timidity  extended  itself  into  physical 
plagiarisnl.  What  would  Emily's  husband 
be  like  ?  All  sugar  to  the  rich  sister-in-law, 
well-primed  by  the  rest  of  the  family.  She 
let  out  a  shrill  of  laughter.  She  would  get 
them  all  into  the  house.  She  would  put  up  the 
shutters  and  turn  the  key,  and  her  Christmas 
entertainment  would  begin. 


154       THE   CHRISTMAS  PARTY 


IX 

THEY  arrived  in  response  to  her  invitation, 
on  Christmas-eve,  all  four  of  them,  driving 
up  in  the  station  fly,  Bertie  on  the  box. 
She  stood  on  the  doorway,  awaiting  them,  and 
"  LYDIA  PROTHEROE,  Theatrical  Costumier 
and  Wig-maker,"  flaunted  over  her  head  in 
the  gilt  lettering  on  the  black  ground.  She 
was  conscious  of  her  exquisite  disparity  with 
this  description.  Sleek  bands,  and  snuff- 
coloured  gown ;  Bertie  and  Emily  should 
find  her  as  they  had  left  her  ;  the  difference 
should  only  by  degrees  dawn  upon  them. 
She  was  glad  now  that  she  should  have 
rejected  the  alteration  in  her  appearance 
which,  to  a  less  subtle  mind,  would  have  been 
so  blatantly  indicated.  There  was  nothing 
blatant  about  Lydia  Protheroe ;  oh  no !  it 
was  all  very  surreptitious,  very  delicate ; 
she  was  an  artist ;  everybody  said  so ;  her 
touch  very  light,  but  very  certain.  She  was 
a  rapier  to  Bertie's  bludgeon.  Bertie  :  he 
had  descended  from  the  fly,  he  had  taken 
both  her  hands  in  his,  he  had  grown  whiskers 
like  his  father's,  his  father's  watch-chain  (she 
recognized  it)  spanned  his  stomach,  he  was 


THE   CHRISTMAS  PARTY       155 

pressing  her  hands  and  looking  into  her  eyes 
with  what  she  was  sure  he  inwardly  phrased 
as  "  a  world  of  tenderness  and  forgiveness," 
while  simultaneously  he  tried  to  scan  out  of 
the  corner  of  his  eye  the  wares  displayed  in 
her  shop-window — the  dragon's  head,  the 
waxen  figure  of  a  fairy,the  crowns  and  harps — 
and  she  saw  him  wince,  but  at  the  same  time, 
she  saw  his  determination  to  ignore  all  this, 
or  to  accept  it,  if  he  was  forced  to,  in  a  spirit 
of  jovial  resignation ;  and  now  Emily  was 
kissing  her,  Emily  with  those  same  thin 
ungenerous  lips  and  pointed  nose,  so  like  her 
own  features  and  yet  so  different,  because  of 
a  recklessness  in  Lydia's  eyes  which  was  not 
in  Emily's — subtle  again — and  now  Bertie's 
wife  enveloped  her  in  a  soft,  fat  little  hug ; 
and  there  was  Emily's  husband,  whom  they 
called  Fred,  and  who  was  a  pink-faced  little 
man  in  a  bowler  hat  and,  for  some  reason,  an 
evening  tie,  pushed  forward  to  embrace  his 
sister-in-law  with  a  reluctance  he  tried  to  turn 
into  enthusiasm. 

Lydia  brought  the  brood  into  the  shop ; 
it  gave  her  a  strange  pang  to  see  them  cross 
her  threshold,  succeeded  by  an  exaltation 
to  have  got  them  safely  there.  She  did  not 
talk  much  ;  she  let  them  do  the  talking  while 


156        THE   CHRISTMAS  PARTY 

she  surveyed  them.  Bertie  was  voluble ; 
he  had  a  lot  of  information  to  give  her,  mixed 
in  with  small  outbursts  of  sentimentality.  He 
had  grown  portly,  and  he  was  most  anxious 
to  conciliate  her ;  she  took  the  measure  of 
Bertie  in  a  moment.  The  others,  clearly, 
were  in  his  charge.  His  wife,  as  ever, 
watched  him  for  her  cues  with  little  twink- 
ling, admiring  eyes.  Emily  produced  a  sour 
and  unconvincing  smile  whenever  Lydia's 
eyes  rested  on  her.  As  for  Fred,  he  smiled 
nervously  the  whole  time,  and  looked  as 
though  he  felt  himself  very  much  of  a 
stranger. 

X 

SHE  had  got  them  all  into  their  rooms  for  the 
night.  She  relished  the  feeling  that  she  had 
got  them  all  safely  shut  in,  and  as  she  stood 
at  the  top  of  the  stairs  looking  first  to  left 
and  then  to  right  along  the  dim  passage,  she 
felt  the  jailer  of  all  those  four  people  behind 
the  closed  doors.  She  would  have  liked  a 
bunch  of  keys  dangling  from  her  belt. 
Squeezing  her  hands  tightly  together,  she 
swayed  backwards  and  forwards  as  she  con- 
trolled her  laughter,  A  single  gas-jet,  turned 


THE   CHRISTMAS   PARTY       157 

low,  lit  the  passage.     She  wandered  away. 
She  wandered  down  into  the  shop,  where  the 
polished  shields  on  the  walls  threw  back  the 
sharp  flame  of  her  candle,  and  the  indistinct, 
peopled  obscurity  of  the  shop.     She  thought 
vaguely  that   the   shop   was  too   full — had 
always   been    too    full  —  she   must   have   a 
clearance — but  there  was  no  longer  any  room 
upstairs — she  ought  to  scrap  half  her  things — 
but  no,  they  were  too  precious.   She  wandered 
away  again,  up  into  the  attic.     She  peered 
round,  thrusting  the  candle  into  the  dark 
corners.     A  rat  scurried  past.     Old  trunks, 
too  full  to  shut ;    velvet  and  damask  and 
leather  protruded  ;   too  full.     Like  life  ;   too 
full.     Like  her  head  ;  too  full.    She  wandered 
back  to  the  dim  passage.     Closed  doors.  The 
gas-jet.     She  could  turn  off  the  gas  at  the 
main  ;  that  would  put  the  house  in  darkness. 
They  would  not  understand  what  had  hap- 
pened.    They  would  run  out  of  their  rooms, 
and  up  and  down  the  house,  looking  for  light ; 
rinding  none ;    blundering  against  objects  in 
the  dark.     She  would  hear  their  footsteps, 
running ;    their  hands,  perhaps,  beating  at 
last  upon  the  shutters.     She  had  seen  clearly 
enough  that  they  already  thought  her  strange. 
She  had  accompanied  Bertie  and  his  wife  to 


158       THE   CHRISTMAS   PARTY 

their  rooms,  and  under  her  scrutiny  they  had 
continued  their  talk ;  they  had  drawn  a 
picture  of  the  social  life  in  their  town  ;  they 
had  spoken  of  nice  little  parties.  "  Not  so 
nice  as  the  little  party  I'm  giving  now," 
Lydia  had  cried,  and  left  them. 

Husband  and  wife  indeed  thought  her  very 
odd  ;  the  wife  was  puzzled  and  uneasy.  All 
through  dinner  Miss  Protheroe  had  been  very 
silent,  from  her  place  at  the  head  of  the  table 
where  she  sat  surveying  her  guests,  only 
occasionally  she  had  given  vent  to  some  such 
outburst,  which  she  had  at  once  restrained ; 
and  the  dining-room  had  been  odd  too,  a 
room  at  the  back  of  the  shop,  full  of  queer 
theatrical  things,  and  a  great  figure  of  a 
Javanese  warrior  in  one  corner,  seven  feet 
high,  with  a  bearded  yellow  mask  under  his 
helmet,  and  a  lantern  swinging  from  the  top 
of  the  spear  he  held  in  his  hand.  Bertie's 
wife  thought  this  a  novel  and  unpleasing 
method  of  lighting  a  room.  She  had  begun 
to  wish  they  had  never  come.  For  the  rest, 
there  had  been  a  barbaric  flavour  about  the 
meal,  unsuitable  to  one  so  obviously  an 
English  spinster ;  they  had  eaten  off  the 
sham  gold  plate,  and  had  drunk  out  of  the 
sham  gold  goblets ;  the  sham  gold  cande- 


THE   CHRISTMAS  PARTY       159 

labra  had  flared  in  the  middle  of  the  table 
with  its  eight  or  ten  candles,  above  a  great 
golden  bowl  of  artificial  fruit. 

It  was  difficult  to  believe  that  that  setting 
was  the  invention  of  Lydia,  sitting  there  so 
prim  in  the  unchanged  gown  of  bombazine. 
It  was  as  disconcerting  an  indication  as  if 
Lydia  had  gotten  up  and  danced. 

Out  in  the  dim  passage  Lydia  paused  before 
Emily's  door.  If  she  despised  Bertie,  she 
fairly  hated  Emily.  Not  one  of  Emily's 
childish  sneakings  and  whinings  was  forgot- 
ten ;  and  Emily  was  unchanged  :  she  had 
been  dragged  here,  reluctant,  by  Bertie, 
tempted  by  the  pictures  Bertie  drew  of 
Lydia' s  wealth ;  unable  to  resist  that,  she 
had  come,  but  she  was  bitter  and  ungracious, 
wringing  out  that  thin,  sour  little  smile 
whenever  Lydia  looked  at  her.  That  sup- 
posed wealth,  now  become  one  of  Lydia's 
dearest  jokes!  They  wouldn't  find  much — 
the  vultures — they  would  find  that  Lydia 
hadn't  hoarded,  hadn't  kept  back  more  than 
the  little  necessary  to  her  own  livelihood,  so 
long  as  charity  had  stretched  out  to  her  its 
piteous  hands.  It  was  not  part  of  Lydia's 
creed  to  feast  while  others  went  hungry.  Not 
for  that  had  she  broken  away  from  her 


160       THE  CHRISTMAS    PARTY 

traditions  and  her  family.  She  would  have 
liked  now  to  sham  dead  just  for  the  sake  of 
seeing  their  faces  and  hearing  their  comments. 

She  wasted  no  time  on  Emily  ;  she  needed 
no  sight  of  Emily's  face  in  order  to  whet  her 
vindictiveness.  She  knew  well  enough  what 
was  going  on  behind  all  those  closed  doors. 
Whispers  of  cupidity,  to  the  ugly  accompani- 
ment of  the  calculation  of  Lydia's  prosperity, 
oh,  she  knew,  she  knew !  Mean  souls  ! 
mean,  prudent  souls !  They  had  thrown  her 
out  when  she  was  poor  ;  they  fawned  on  her 
now  that  they  thought  her  rich.  Well,  she 
would  teach  them  a  lesson ;  she  would  give 
them  twenty-four  hours'  entertainment  which 
they  would  not  be  likely  to  forget. 

She  crept  away,  down  the  dark  stairs  into 
her  shop.  At  home  again,  among  her  fanci- 
ful and  extravagant  confederates !  She  held 
out  her  arms  towards  her  shop,  as  though  to 
embrace  it.  They  were  allies,  she  and  it, 
the  world  of  illusion  against  the  world  of  fact. 

She  set  to  work. 


XI 

NEXT   morning    her   guests   came   down  to 
breakfast  with  white  faces.    They  shot  doubt- 


THE  CHRISTMAS  PARTY       161 

ful  glances  at  Lydia  when  she  blandly  wished 
them  a  happy  Christmas.  There  were  par- 
cels put  ready  for  them  beside  all  their  plates, 
and  Lydia  observed  with  sarcasm  their  re- 
viving spirits  as  they  opened  them  in  optimis- 
tic expectancy,  and  their  consternation  as 
they  discovered  the  contents  :  a  big,  pink 
turned-up  nose  for  Bertie,  a  blue  wig  for 
Bertie's  wife,  a  pair  of  ears  for  Fred,  and  a 
black  moustache  for  Emily.  Led  by  Bertie, 
they  tried  at  first  to  disguise  their  vexation 
under  good-humour  : 

"Ha!  ha!  very  funny,  my  dear,"  said 
Bertie,  putting  on  the  nose  and  poking  it 
facetiously  into  his  wife's  face. 

"  But  you  must  all  put  them  on,"  said  Miss 
Protheroe,  without  a  smile. 

They  looked  at  her  :  she  was  perfectly 
serious  and  even  compelling.  They  began  to 
be  a  little  afraid,  though  they  were  even  more 
afraid  of  showing  it.  They  tried  to  expostu- 
late, still  good-humour edly,  but,  "  If  you 
don't  like  my  presents,  you  can't  eat  my 
breakfast,"  said  Miss  Protheroe. 

They  had  to  comply.  Lydia  presided 
gravely,  while  the  four  sat  round  the  table, 
eating  kippers,  tricked  out  in  their  respective 
presents.  Emily,  whose  black  moustache 


162       THE  CHRISTMAS   PARTY 

worked  up  and  down  as  she  ate,  was  controlled 
only  by  the  beseeching  gaze  of  Bertie's  eyes 
over  the  top  of  the  enormous  nose  ;  Bertie's 
wife  shed  silent  tears  which  fell  into  her  plate. 

"  Shall  you  expect  us,  my  dear,"  Bertie 
said  towards  the  end  of  that  grim  meal, 
feeling  that  it  was  becoming  urgent  to  break 
the  silence,  "  to  go  to  church  like  this  ?  " 

"  Church  ?  you  aren't  going  to  church," 
replied  Lydia. 

There  was  a  chorus :  Not  go  to  church  on 
Christmas-day  ? 

"No,"  said  Lydia;  "but,"  she  added 
suddenly,  "  you  can  give  me  your  offertory, 
and  I'll  see  that  it  reaches  the  proper  quarter. 
Charity  at  Christmas  time!  Turn  out  your 
pockets." 

"  Look  here,  Alice,"  said  Bertie,  standing 
up,  "  this  is  going  beyond  a  joke.  Be  very 
careful,  or  we  shall  be  obliged  to  leave  your 
house." 

"  You  can't,"  said  Miss  Protheroe.  "  The 
doors  are  locked,  the  shutters  are  locked  and 
barred,  and  you  stay  here  for  as  long  as  I 
choose  to  keep  you.  You  are  my  guests — 
see?  And  I've  waited  for  you,  for  forty 
years.  I  shan't  let  you  go  now." 

They  heard  her  words  ;  they  stared  at  one 


THE  CHRISTMAS   PARTY       163 

another  with  a  sudden  horror  leaping  in  their 
eyes. 

XII 

Bertie's  wife  began  to  weep,  loudly  and 
helplessly. 

"  Oh,  let  me  get  out  of  this,"  she  cried ; 
"  why  did  we  ever  come  ?  Bertie,  it  was 
your  fault.  Oh,  why  didn't  you  leave  her 
alone  ?  the  wicked,  mad  woman  ?  Think  of 
the  noises  in  the  night.  The  house  haunted, 
and  Alice  mad!  For  God's  sake  let's  clear 
out." 

"  She's  in  league  with  the  Devil,"  said 
Emily  in  the  black  moustache. 

They  had  all  forgotten,  by  now,  about  the 
appearance  they  variously  presented,  and  all 
stared  at  each  other  fearfully,  grotesque, 
ridiculous,  but  unheeding. 

"  Christmas  morning!  "  cried  Bertie's  wife, 
and  wept  more  bitterly  than  before. 

"  Here,  I've  nothing  to  do  with  this — / 
never  turned  you  out,"  said  Fred  to  Lydia, 
speaking  for  the  first  time. 

"You  haven't  given  me  your  offertory  yet," 
said  Lydia.  "  Now  then,"  she  said,  "  out 
with  it!  Bertie,  you  used  to  be  a  church- 


164        THE   CHRISTMAS   PARTY 

warden  at  home  ;  you  take  round  the  plate." 

Bertie's  wife  screamed  when  she  saw  a 
revolver  in  Lydia's  hand. 

"Keep  quiet,  you  women!"  said  Bertie, 
playing  the  male  ;  "  if  she's  mad,  we  must 
humour  her.  Where's  your  money  ?  " 

They  fumbled,  the  two  men  in  their  pock- 
ets, the  two  women  in  their  bags,  not  one  of 
them  daring  to  take  their  eyes  off  Lydia  for 
an  instant. 

"Is  that  all  you've  got?"  asked  Lydia, 
when  the  plate  presented  by  Bertie  was  filled 
with  silver,  copper,  and  notes  ;  "  turn  out 
the  linings."  They  obeyed.  "  You  may  go 
to  your  rooms  now,  if  you  like,"  she  added, 
"  but  don't  be  late  for  dinner  ;  we'll  have  it 
at  one.  And  mind  you  come  down  as  you  are 
now.  You're  no  more  disguised  like  that, 
let  me  tell  you,  than  you  are  with  your  every- 
day faces.  There's  no  such  thing  as  truth 
in  you,  so  one  disguise  is  no  more  of  a  dis- 
guise than  any  other.  Your  shams  are  just 
as  much  shams  as  my  shams.  And  that's 
one  of  the  things  you  can  learn  while  you're 
here." 

They  filed  out  of  the  room,  past  the  tall 
figure  of  Lydia,  who,  like  a  grim  grenadier, 
watched  them  go,  still  perfectly  grave,  but 


THE   CHRISTMAS   PARTY       165 

with  an  awful  mockery  in  her  eyes.  She 
savoured  to  the  full  the  absurdity  of  their 
appearance.  There  was  no  detail  of  incon- 
gruity which  escaped  her  glance.  When 
they  had  all  got  out  of  the  room,  and  she  had 
heard  them  scurrying,  frightened  rabbits,  up 
the  stairs,  she  sat  down  again  in  her  chair  and 
laughed  and  laughed.  But  it  was  not  quite 
the  wholesome  laugh  of  one  who  plays  a 
successful  practical  joke ;  it  was,  rather,  a 
cackle  of  real  malevolence,  the  malevolence 
that  has  waited  and  brooded  and  been  pa- 
tient, that  has  dammed  up  its  impulse  for 
many  years.  She  sat  and  laughed  at  the 
head  of  her  table,  with  the  debris  of  the 
brown  paper  parcels  strewn  beside  every 
plate. 

XIII 

DOWN  to  dinner  under  the  threat  of  the 
revolver.  She  was  intolerant  now  of  the 
smallest  resistance.  She  got  them  sitting 
there  in  the  same  travesty,  forced  them  to 
eat,  forced  them  to  entertain  her  with  their 
conversation.  "No  glum  faces!"  she  said 
sharply.  It  was  hard  enough  to  look  glum 
under  those  additions  to  nature;  Bertie's  nose 


166       THE   CHRISTMAS  PARTY 

especially  had  a  convivial  air,  it  imposed  upon 
him  a  gross  jollity  he  was  very  far  from  feeling. 
They  ate  turkey  and  plum-pudding,  un- 
willingly, choking  back,  according  to  their 
natures,  their  fury  or  their  tears.  Lydia 
had  not  stinted  their  fare  ;  but  then,  she  had 
never  been  niggardly.  There  was  a  lavish- 
ness  in  her  providing ;  there  were  raisins, 
almonds,  brandy  ;  and  she  urged  the  appe- 
tites of  her  guests  with  an  ironical  though 
genuine  hospitality.  "  Christmas  dinner,  you 
know,"  she  said  to  them  as  she  heaped  the 
food  upon  their  plates.  They  protested ; 
she  nearly  laughed  at  the  piteous  protest  in 
their  eyes  shining  out  through  their  ridiculous 
trappings.  But  she  remembered  the  forty 
years,  and  the  laughter  died  unborn. 

Forty  years — and  she  had  got  them  to 
herself.     She  would  let  them  off  nothing. 

XIV 

AFTER  dinner  they  huddled  all  four  together 
in  the  same  room.  They  could  not  lock 
themselves  in,  because  Lydia  had  removed  all 
the  keys. 

They    whispered    together    a    good    deal, 
running  up  and  down  the  scale  from  apathy 


THE  CHRISTMAS  PARTY       167 

to  indignation.  They  had  even  moments  of 
curiosity,  when  they  ferreted  among  the 
hotch-potch  of  things  they  found  stuffed 
away  in  the  cupboards  and  drawers,  and 
under  the  bed  ;  and  speculated  marvelling 
on  the  queerness  of  Alice's  existence  among 
these  things  :  forty  years  of  masquerade ! 
But  for  the  most  part  they  sat  gloomy,  or 
wandered  aimlessly  about  the  room,  dwelling 
in  their  own  minds  upon  their  several  appre- 
hensions. Bertie's  wife  said,  "  It's  all  so 
vague — only  hints,  so  to  speak,"  and  a 
background  of  shadows  leapt  into  being. 

Steps  prowled  past  in  the  passage ;  they 
prowled  up  and  down.  The  four  in  the  room 
looked  at  one  another.  There  was  a  faint 
cry  outside,  and  a  laugh. 

"  Two  people,  or  one  ?  "  they  whispered. 

There  was  no  telling  how  many  people  the 
house  might  conceal.  The  resources  of  the 
shop  alone  could  transform  Lydia  into  a 
hundred  different  characters.  She  would 
change  her  personality  with  each  one.  They 
could  not  contemplate  this  idea.  It  credited 
her  with  uncanny  powers.  Their  imagina- 
tions, which  had  never  in  their  lives  been  set 
to  work  before,  now  gaped,  pits  full  of  possi- 
bilities. 


168       THE   CHRISTMAS   PARTY 

They  peeped  and  were  afraid. 

Towards  four  o'clock  it  grew  dark  and  they 
lit  the  gas,  but  after  an  hour  or  so  it  suddenly 
went  out.  They  could  not  find  any  matches, 
hunting  round  in  the  dark.  "  Is  there  no 
light  ?  "  said  their  voices.  Somebody  found 
the  door,  opened  it,  and  fled  out :  it  was  Fred. 
They  heard  him  running  down  the  passage, 
and  his  steps  upon  the  stair.  He  would  get 
down  into  the  shop ;  he  must  look  after 
himself.  They  sat  down  in  the  dark,  pressed 
together  to  listen  and  to  wait. 

XV 

IT  was  the  silence  in  the  house,  all  that 
afternoon  and  evening,  which  frightened  them. 
They  were  left  to  themselves,  there  was  no 
sign  of  Lydia;  there  was  no  sound  in  the  house 
but  the  sounds  they  made  themselves. 
Now  and  then  one  of  them  would  get  up  and 
go  restlessly  over  to  the  window  :  but  though 
they  debated  whether  they  should  hail  a 
passer-by  in  the  street  they  feared  too  greatly 
the  consequences  of  the  scandal.  Whatever 
happened,  this  thing  must  remain  a  secret 
for  ever ;  on  that  point  they  were  agreed  and 
decided.  This  consideration  kept  them  from 


THE   CHRISTMAS   PARTY       169 

the  violence  they  might  otherwise  have  at- 
tempted. No  one  must  know  .  .  .  poor 
Lydia  .  .  .  her  shame  was  their  shame  .  .  . 
madness  in  the  family.  ...  So  they  kept 
silent ;  meekness  was  the  only  prudence. 
Weary,  they  realized  that  they  were  old, 
and  looked  at  one  another  with  a  kind  of 
pity.  They  spoke  very  little.  Their  lives 
stretched  out  behind  them,  enviable  in  their 
secure  monotony.  Never  had  they  envisaged 
the  grotesque  as  a  possible  element.  The 
only  grotesque  that  had  had  a  place  in  their 
minds,  was  death ;  and  that,  by  virtue  of  much 
precedent,  was  sanctioned  into  conformity. 

"  She's  got  the  better  of  us,"  said  Emily  once. 

"  No,  no,  no,"  said  Bertie  with  sudden 
energy;  he  could  not  admit  it.  "No,  no," 
he  said  again,  getting  up  and  walking  about. 
66  .No,"  he  said,  striking  with  his  fist  into  the 
palm  of  the  other  hand. 

They  waited  till  the  evil  hours  should  have 
passed  and  the  normal  be  reasserted. 

XVI 

THERE  remained  the  evening  and  the  night. 
Lydia  had  said  Christmas-day,  and  for  some 
reason  they  took  for  granted  that  after 


170       THE  CHRISTMAS   PARTY 

Christmas-day  was  passed  all  would  be  over — 
one  way  or  the  other.  The  shutters  would 
be  unbarred,  the  shop  reopened,  and  life 
would  return  to  the  cloistered  house.  Still 
the  evening  and  the  night.  What  a  Christ- 
mas-tide !  And  they  were  old  ;  too  old  for 
such  pranks.  Bertie  was  sixty-five.  Old, 
too  old.  They  were  tired  of  the  strain  of  the 
silent  day.  Hungry,  too,  although  they  had 
not  noticed  it.  They  went  downstairs  meekly 
when  Lydia  summoned  them  to  supper. 
Nose,  ears,  moustache,  blue  wig  ;  no  attempt 
at  rebellion.  They  sat  round  the  table, 
waiting  to  be  given  their  food  and  drink. 
They  had  half  hoped  that  Lydia  would  pre- 
sent some  unexpected  appearance ;  if  she  was 
mad,  she  ought  to  look  mad  ;  that  would  be 
less  terrifying.  It  was  horrible  to  be  so  mad 
and  to  continue  to  look  so  sane.  She  might 
have  been  an  old  family  governess  ;  a  strict 
one.  Whereas  they  were  condemned  to  sit 
there,  so  ludicrous ;  knowing,  moreover, 
that  she  lost  none  of  the  full  savour  of  the 
paradox. 

"  You  shall  drink  my  health,"  she  said, 
at  the  opening  of  the  meal. 

They  drank  it,  in  neat  spirit.  She  plied 
them  with  more. 


THE  CHRISTMAS  PARTY        171 

"  I  never  touch  anything,"  said  Emily 
feebly. 

"  No,  but  this  is  an  exception."  She 
poured  freely  into  Emily's  glass,  drinking 
nothing  herself. 

The  Javanese  warrior  holding  the  lantern 
on  his  spear  grinned  down  at  them  with  his 
yellow  mask.  The  candles  flickered  in  the 
great  sham  candelabras.  The  spirit  was 
tawny  in  the  shining  glasses. 

64  Drink  !  it's  our  last  evening  together." 

Emily  looked  at  Lydia,  they  were  sisters ; 
had  the  same  features ;  were  not  unlike  one 
another. 

"  We  shared  a  bedroom,  Alice,  didn't  we  ? 
I  got  into  your  bed  once,  when  I  was  frigh- 
tened at  night.  There  was  a  box  made  of 
shells  on  the  dressing-table,  do  you  remember  ? 
Mother  gave  it  to  us  at  the  seaside." 

She  laughed  ;  her  laugh  was  almost  tender. 

"  I  used  to  pull  your  hair,  Alice,"  said 
Bertie. 

They  were  suddenly  confident  that  Alice 
would  do  them  no  harm. 

"Forty  years,"  said  Lydia,  looking  down 
the  table  at  them. 

"A  waste  of  time,"  said  Bertie,  "when  we 
were  brother  and  sisters  together.  But 
M 


172       THE  CHRISTMAS  PARTY 

you've  paid  us  out,  Alice,  you've  paid  us  out." 
"  Not  yet,"  said  Lydia,  "  not  fully." 
"  I  daresay  I  should  have  done  the  same 
myself,"    said    Bertie's    wife,    surprisingly. 
"  After  all,  it  was  a  joke,  Alice ;    why  not 
take  Alice's  joke  in  good  part  ?  3:     She  looked 
round,  as  though  she  had  made  a  discovery. 
"  If  you  prefer,"  said  Lydia,  unmoved. 
"  Ha,  ha  ! "  said  Fred,  and  was  suddenly 
silent. 

They  began  to  eat  what  Lydia  had  given 
them.  Beyond  the  open  door  of  the  dining- 
room  the  shop  was  dark  and  jumbled.  Lydia 
ate  primly,  and  the  little  black  revolver  lay 
beside  her  plate.  The  light  glinted  along  its 
barrels.  They  viewed  it  without  apprehen- 
sion. This  was  their  last  evening ;  they 
were  confusedly  sorry  ;  Alice,  hospitable  if 
eccentric ;  and  what,  indeed,  was  eccentri- 
city ?  She  was  giving  them  champagne  now ; 
it  was  wrong  to  begin  with  spirits,  and  to 
go  on  to  champagne ;  but  what  matter  ? 
Alice  was  well-meaning ;  generous.  That 
little  revolver  :  like  a  little  black,  shining 
bull-terrier,  squat,  bulbous.  They  heard 
themselves  laughing  and  making  jokes.  Alice 
seemed  pleased,  she  was  smiling ;  up  to  the 
present  she  had  not  smiled  at  all ;  but  now 


THE   CHRISTMAS  PARTY       173 

the  smile  was  constant  on  her  face  as  she 
watched  them.  They  exerted  themselves  to 
entertain  her.  Their  efforts  were  successful ; 
she  watched  them  with  evident  approval, 
swaying  a  little,  backwards  and  forwards, 
as  she  sat.  They  ventured  more ;  still 
she  smiled,  and  her  hand  poured  generously, 
though  she  did  not  empty  her  own  glass. 
They  had  forgotten  that  they  were  old. 
Looking  at  one  another,  they  laughed  very 
heartily  over  the  trappings  Alice  had  pro- 
vided for  them.  "  Christmas!  "  said  Bertie, 
tapping  his  nose.  Emily  leant  back  in  her 
chair ;  she  was  sleepy  and  happy.  She 
roused  herself  to  accept  the  sweets  which 
Lydia  offered  her.  "  Sleepy,"  she  mur- 
mured, smiling  at  Bertie's  wife ;  "  your 
hair  ..."  she  toppled  off  to  sleep  in  the 
midst  of  her  sentence.  Fred  wanted  to  prop 
her  up.  "  Let  her  be,"  said  Lydia  benignly. 
"All  happy,"  said  Bertie.  They  pulled 
crackers,  and  put  the  paper  caps  on  their 
heads  ;  the  table  under  the  candelabra  was 
littered  with  the  coloured  paper  off  the  crack- 
ers, and  there  was  a  discord  produced  by  the 
whistles  and  small  trumpets  that  came  out 
of  them.  Bertie  was  on  his  feet,  trying  all 
these  toy  instruments  in  turn ;  he  swayed 


174       THE   CHRISTMAS   PARTY 

round  the  table,  collecting  them,  and  reading 
out  the  mottoes.  He  paused  to  look  at  his 
wife,  who  had  fallen  forward  with  her  arms 
on  the  table  and  her  head  on  her  arms. 
"  Asleep,"  he  said,  with  a  puzzled  expression. 
Lydia  still  sat  bolt  upright  at  the  head  of  the 
table,  letting  them  all  have  their  way  as  it 
seemed  best  to  them,  whether  in  sleep  or 
hilarity ;  with  her  hands  she  clasped  her 
elbows,  and  the  bands  of  hair  lay  undisturbed 
upon  her  brows.  She  examined  her  guests 
in  turn ;  Emily,  who  slept,  slipped  sideway 
in  her  chair,  the  moustache  still  stuck  on  her 
upper  lip  ;  Bertie's  wife,  who  slept  likewise, 
her  face  hidden,  the  blue  wig  uppermost ; 
Fred,  who  between  the  ears  stared  vaguely 
before  him ;  and  Bertie,  who,  portly  and  ir- 
responsible, wandered  round  the  table  search- 
ing among  the  litter  of  the  crackers.  Lydia 
at  last,  having  scrutinized  them  all,  gave  out 
a  sudden  creaking  laugh.  Her  party  was  to 
her  satisfaction.  "Forty  years!"  she  said, 
nodding  at  Bertie,  "forty  years!"  When 
she  laughed  he  looked  at  her,  dimly  startled 
through  his  confusion.  "  Christmas,"  he 
replied,  blinking ;  he  intended  it  to  be  an 
expression  of  good-will,  an  obliteration  of 
those  forty  years.  At  last,  he  thought,  they 


THE  CHRISTMAS   PARTY       175 

had  found  out  the  right  way  to  treat  Alice  : 
not  solemnly,  not  as  though  they  were  afraid 
of  her,  but  in  a  light-hearted  and  jocund 
spirit.  "  Christmas,"  he  repeated,  leaning 
up  against  her  chair. 

She  began  to  laugh.  Her  laughter  grew  ; 
it  creaked  at  first,  then  grew  shrill ;  she 
pointed  derisively  at  them  all  in  turn.  Bertie 
was  not  alarmed  ;  he  joined  in.  He  relished 
at  last  the  humour  of  the  situation,  which 
Alice  had  been  relishing  now  since  yesterday. 
She  had  got  twenty-four  hours'  start  ahead 
of  him  :  an  unfair  advantage.  He  made  up 
for  lost  time  by  trying  to  laugh  more  heartily 
than  she  did.  She  observed  this  with  a 
dangerous  appreciation ;  her  fingers  began 
to  play  with  the  butt  of  the  revolver.  Forty 
years.  Forty  Christmases  spent  in  solitude. 
Her  sudden  rage  blackened  out  the  room 
before  her  eyes.  She  lifted  the  revolver 
uncertainly,  then  laid  it  down  again.  "  Subtle, 
subtle.  Not  blatant,"  she  muttered  to  her- 
self, an  often-rehearsed  lesson,  and  tapped 
her  fingers  against  her  teeth.  She  felt  slightly 
helpless,  as  though  she  were  unable  to  make 
the  most  of  her  opportunity.  She  knew 
she  had  had  many  schemes,  but  they  all 
seemed  to  be  slipping  away  from  her.  It 


176        THE   CHRISTMAS  PARTY 

was  difficult  to  hold  on  to  one's  thoughts, 
difficult  to  concentrate  them  ;  they  scattered 
as  one  came  up  to  them,  like  a  lot  of  sparrows. 
A  pity — she  must  make  an  effort — because 
the  opportunity  would  not  come  again. 

Just  then  she  heard  the  front- door  bell 
ring  sharply  through  the  house. 

A  little  dazed,  she  got  up  to  answer  it.  A 
messenger  from  outside  ?  Perhaps  an  unex- 
pected help  in  her  emergency  ?  She  left 
the  dining-room,  where  Bertie  fumbled  and 
tried  to  detain  her  ;  she  passed  through  the 
shop,  and,  moving  like  a  sleep-walker,  un- 
locked and  undid  the  many  fastenings  of  the 
door.  Outside  in  the  street  stood  a  group  of 
men,  carrying  lanterns ;  the  snow  sparkled 
on  the  ground ;  the  narrow  street  was  like 
an  illustration  of  old-fashioned  Christmas. 
She  stood  holding  the  door  open.  She  recog- 
nized many  of  her  fellow-tradesmen ;  she 
heard  their  words, "  Your  well-known  charity, 
Miss  Protheroe  .  .  .  never  turn  away  an 
appeal  unanswered.  .  .  .  Christmas-time  .  .  . 
trust  we  don't  intrude.  .  .  ."  and  heard  the 
rattle  of  coin,  and  saw  the  collecting-boxes 
in  their  hands. 

"  You  don't  intrude,"  she  said.  "  Come  in." 

Inwardly  she  knew  they  wanted  an  excuse 


THE  CHRISTMAS  PARTY       177 

to  find  out  how  Miss  Protheroe  spent  her 
Christmas.  They  should  see.  They  came  in, 
removing  their  hats,  from  which  the  melting 
snow  began  to  drip,  and  scraping  the  snow 
from  their  boots  on  the  wire  mat ;  their 
faces  were  red  and  jovial.  She  led  them 
through  the  jumbled  shop,  through  into  the 
dining-room,  where  Bertie  leant  up  against 
the  littered  table,  and  the  two  women  slept, 
and  Fred  gaped  stupidly. 

They  were  at  a  loss  to  say  anything; 
checked  in  their  joke  of  routing  out  old  Miss 
Protheroe,  they  gazed  uncomprehending  at 
the  scene  before  them.  Their  eyes  turned 
again  towards  Miss  Protheroe ;  she  stood 
erect  and  prim,  her  hands  clasping  her  elbows. 

"  You  don't  know  my  relations,"  she  said, 
and,  indicating  them,  "  my  sister,  my  brother- 
in-law,  my  sister-in-law,  my  brother."  She 
effected  the  introduction  with  irreproachable 
gravity. 

"  She's  mad,"  cried  Bertie  suddenly,  reason 
flooding  him,  and  he  pointed  at  her  with  a 
denouncing  hand. 

They  stared,  first  at  those  four  crazy 
figures,  and  then  at  the  stiff  correctness  of 
Miss  Protheroe  as  they  always  knew  her. 


PATIENCE 


HE  had  only  to  seclude  his  mind  in  order  to 
imagine  himself  in  the  train  again,  to  hear 
its  steady  beat,  and  to  sway  monotonously 
with  its  rocking.  As  soon  as  he  had  isolated 
himself  in  this  day-dream,  he  was  impervious 
to  the  sights  and  sounds  that  washed  round 
on  the  outskirts  of  his  consciousness.  He 
was  safely  withdrawn.  He  sat  staring,  not 
at  the  green  baize  of  the  card-table,  where 
his  wife,  with  white,  plump,  be-ringed  hands, 
under  the  strong  light  thrown  down  by  the 
shaded  lamp,  set  out  the  neat  rows  of  shiny 
cards  for  her  Patience ;  he  sat  staring, 
sheltered  within  the  friendly  shadows,  not 
at  this  evening  security  of  his  home,  but  out 
through  the  rectangular  windows  of  the 
train,  that  framed  the  hard  blaze  of  the 
southern  country,  the  red  rocks  and  the  blue 
sea  ;  the  train  curving  in  and  out  of  tunnels, 
round  the  sharp  promontories,  disclosing  the 
secrets  of  little  bays,  the  pine-trees  among 

181 


182  PATIENCE 

the  boulders,  and  the  blackened  scrub  that 
betokened  a  previous  hillside  fire. 

Opposite  him,  she  slept,  curled  up  in  the 
corner  of  the  seat,  very  young  and  very 
fragile  under  the  big  collar  of  soft  fur  of  her 
coat  thrown  over  her  to  keep  off  the  dust. 
He  had  wished  that  she  would  look  out  of 
the  window  with  him ;  he  knew  how  she 
would  sit  up,  and  the  quick  impatient 
gesture  by  which  she  would  dash  the  hair 
out  of  her  eyes,  but  she  slept  so  peacefully, 
so  like  a  child,  that  he  would  not  wake  her. 
He  bent  forward,  knocking  the  ash  of  his 
cigarette  off  against  the  window-ledge,  to 
get  a  better  view  out  of  the  window ;  and 
every  little  creek,  as  the  curving  train  took 
it  out  of  view,  he  pursued  with  regretful 
eyes,  knowing  that  he  would  not  pass  that 
way  again.  This  forlorn  and  beautiful  coast, 
whose  every  accident  was  so  faithfully  fol- 
lowed by  the  train,  this  coast,  every  bit  of 
it,  was  a  party  to  his  happiness,  and  he  had 
been  reluctant  to  let  it  go. 
\:  How  his  heart  ached!  Perhaps  it  was  not 
wholesome  to  have  trained  his  mind  to  enter 
so  readily,  so  completely,  into  that  world  of 
recollections  ?  He  dragged  himself  out : 

"  Patience  going  well  ?  5: 


PATIENCE  183 

"Not  very  well  to-night." 

He  drifted  away  again,  before  he  well  knew 
that  he  had  drifted.  Not  to  the  train  this 
time — his  memories  were  illimitably  various. 
(The  time  had  been  when  he  could  not  trust 
himself  to  dip  into  them,  those  memories 
that  were  now  perpetually  his  refuge,  his 
solace,  and  his  pain.)  An  hotel  bedroom. 
What  hotel?— it  didn't  matter.  All  hotel 
bedrooms  were  alike  ;  all  Paradise,  so  long 
as  they  had  contained  her.  In  what  spot  ? — 
that  didn't  matter,  either  ;  somewhere  warm 
and  gaudy  ;  all  their  escapades  had  been  in 
southern  places.  Somewhere  with  bougain- 
villaea ramping  over  creamy  houses,  some- 
where with  gay  irresponsible  negroes  selling 
oranges  out  of  immense  baskets  at  the  street 
corners.  She  had  never  tired  of  the  gash  of 
their  white  teeth  in  their  black  faces  as  they 
grinned.  She  would  stop  to  buy  their 
oranges  just  to  get  the  grin.  And  some  of 
them  could  juggle  with  oranges,  which  made 
her  laugh  and  turn  to  him  in  delight  and  clap 
her  hands.  He  clenched  his  fingers  together, 
out  of  sight,  as  he  lounged  in  the  depths  of 
his  arm-chair.  That  hotel  bedroom!  Her 
clothes  .  .  .  He  used  to  kneel  on  the  floor 
beside  her  open  dressing-case,  lifting  out  her 


184  PATIENCE 

clothes  for  her,  because  she  was  too  lazy  to 
unpack  for  herself.  She  watched  him  through 
her  eye-lashes,  amused  at  his  complaints 
which  so  ill  concealed  his  joy  in  her  posses- 
sions ;  then  she  would  catch  his  head  and 
strain  it  hungrily  against  her.  They  were 
always  violent,  irresistible,  surprising,  those 
rare  demonstrations  of  hers,  and  left  him 
dizzy  and  abashed.  That  hotel  bedroom! 
Always  the  same  furniture ;  the  iron  bed- 
stead under  the  draped  mosquito  curtains 
that  were  so  oddly  bridal ;  the  combined 
wash-stand  and  chest  of  drawers  (the 
drawers  incorrigibly  half-open  and  spilling 
the  disorder  of  her  garments,  her  ribbons, 
and  her  laces),  the  hanging  wardrobe  with 
the  long  looking-glass  door,  the  dressing- 
table  littered  with  her  brushes,  her  powder, 
and  her  scent  bottles.  The  evenings — he 
would  come  noiselessly  into  her  room  while 
she  lingered  at  her  mirror,  in  her  long  silk 
nightgown,  her  gleaming  arms  lifted  to  take 
the  pins  out  of  her  hair  ;  and  after  standing 
in  the  door-way  to  watch  her,  he  would 
switch  off  the  electric  light,  so  that  the  open 
window  and  the  dark  blue  sky  suddenly 
leapt  up,  deep,  luminous,  and  spangled  with 
gold  stars  behind  her.  Then  the  coo  of  her 


PATIENCE  185 

voice,  never  startled,  never  hasty  :  a  coo  of 
laughter  and  remonstrance,  rather  than  of 
displeasure ;  and  he  would  go  to  her  and 
draw  her  out  on  to  the  balcony,  from  where, 
his  arm  flung  round  her  shoulders  and  her 
suppleness  yielding  contentedly  to  his  pres- 
sure, they  watched  the  yellow  moon  mount 
up  above  the  sheaves  of  the  palm-trees,  and 
glint  upon  a  shield  of  distant  water. 

And  there  were  other  nights  :  so  many,  he 
might  take  his  choice  amongst  them.  Carni- 
val nights,  when  she  fled  away  from  him  and 
became  a  spirit,  an  incarnation  of  carnival, 
and  the  sweep  of  her  dancing  eyes  over  his 
face  was  vague  and  rapid,  as  though  he  were 
a  stranger  she  had  never  seen  before.  He 
used  to  feel  a  small  despair,  thinking  that 
any  domino  who  whirled  her  away  possessed 
her  in  closer  affinity  than  he.  And  when  he 
had  at  last  thankfully  brought  her  back  into 
her  room  at  the  hotel,  with  confetti  scattered 
over  the  floor,  fallen  from  her  carnival 
clothes,  whose  tawdry  satin  and  tinsel  lay 
thrown  across  a  chair,  then,  although  he 
could  not  have  wished  her  sweeter,  she  still 
kept  that  will-o'-the-wisp  remoteness,  that 
air  of  one  who  has  strayed  and  been  with 
difficulty  recaptured,  which  made  him  wonder 


186  PATIENCE 

whether  he  or  anyone  else  would  ever  truly 
touch  the  secret  of  her  shy  and  fugitive 
heart. 

"  How  funny  you  are,  Paul.  You  haven't 
turned  over  a  page  of  your  book  for  at  least 
twenty  minutes."  Not  a  rebuke — merely  a 
placid  comment.  Another  set  of  Patience 
nicely  dealt  out. 

After  that  he  turned  the  pages  assiduously, 
it  wouldn't  do  to  be  caught  dreaming.  Then 
came  the  relapse  .  .  . 

She  had  flitted  away  from  him ;  yes,  the 
day  had  come  when  she  had  flitted.  He  had 
known,  always,  somewhere  within  himself, 
that  it  would  come.  To  whom  had  she 
gone  ? — he  didn't  know  ;  he  hadn't  tried  to 
find  out,  perhaps  to  no  one;  and,  anyway, 
the  fate  of  her  body,  passionately  as  he  had 
loved  it,  didn't  seem  so  vital  a  matter  ;  what 
mattered  was  the  flame  within  her ;  he 
couldn't  bear  to  think  that  she  should  have 
given  anyone  that.  Not  that  he  was  fatuous 
enough  to  suppose  that  he  had  ever  had  it. 
Oh,  no ! — he  was  far  too  humble,  too  diffident 
in  his  mind.  He  had  worshipped  her  all  the 
more  because  he  knew  there  was  something 
in  her  withdrawn,  the  eternal  pilgrim,  the 
incorrigible  truant.  He  knew  that  he  could 


PATIENCE  187 

never  have  loved  any  woman  who  hadn't 
that  element  in  her,  and  since  he  had  only 
found  it  once,  quite  logically  he  had  n§ver 
loved  but  once.  (He  had  been  young  then. 
It  had  been  easy  enough  for  his  relations  to 
pick  holes  in  her  :  "  Flighty,"  they  had  said, 
and,  snorting,  "  She  takes  the  best  years  of 
his  life  and  then  throws  him  aside,"  and  to  all 
their  comments  he  had  never  answered  once, 
but  had  looked  at  them  with  deeply  wounded 
eyes,  so  that  they  wondered  uneasily  what 
thoughts  were  locked  in  his  heart.  Nor  had 
they  ever  got  any  information  out  of  him  ; 
all  their  version  of  the  story  had  been  pieced 
together  from  bits  of  gossip  and  rumour ; 
correct  in  the  main  as  to  facts,  but  utterly  at 
sea  as  to  essentials.  But  as  he  disdained  to  set 
them  right,  they  were  never  any  the  wiser.) 
Never  loved  but  once  ;  and  here  he  was, 
fifty,  prosperous,  even  envied  by  other  men, 
going  daily  about  his  affairs,  dining  well, 
talking  rationally,  a  certain  portliness  in  his 
manner  which  his  figure  had  escaped.  .  .  . 
He  and  his  wife,  a  commendable  couple  ;  a 
couple  that  made  one  disbelieve  in  anarchy, 
wild  oats,  or  wild  animals.  People  smiled 
with  the  satisfaction  of  approval  when  they 
came  into  a  room ;  here  were  security, 

N 


188  PATIENCE 

decorum ;  here  were  civilization  and  polite- 
ness ;  here  was  a  member  of  the  civic  cor- 
poration, a  burgher  to  admire  and  to  respect. 
He  had  a  grave,  courtly  manner,  slightly 
indulgent  towards  women,  which  they  found 
not  unattractive,  although  they  knew  that 
he  varied  it  towards  none  of  them,  whether 
plain  or  pretty,  staid  or  skittish.  There  was 
always  the  same  grave  smile  on  his  lips, 
always  the  same  sustained,  controlled  interest 
in  his  eyes  ;  attention,  perhaps,  rather  than 
interest ;  the  line  was  a  difficult  one  to  draw. 
The  type  of  man  who  made  other  men  say, 
"  Wish  we  had  more  fellows  like  him,"  and 
of  whom  the  women  said  amongst  themselves, 
"  A  puzzling  man,  somehow,  isn't  he  ?  So 
quiet.  One  never  knows  what  he  is  really 
thinking,  or  whether  he  isn't  laughing  at  us 
all.  Do  you  suppose,  though,  that  he  has 
ever  really  felt  ?  " 

The  madcap  things  she  did!  He  recalled 
that  evening  at  the  railway  station,  when 
under  the  glare  of  the  arc-lights  she  had 
danced  up  to  a  ticket-collector — she  in  her 
little  travelling  hat  and  her  furs  and  the  soft 
luxury  that  always  seemed  to  surround  her  : 
"  When  does  the  next  train  start  ?  "  "  Where 
for,  miss  ?  "  "  Oh,  it  doesn't  matter  where 


PATIENCE  189 

for — just  the  next  train  ?  ':  And  they  had 
gone  to  Stroud. 

"  This  Patience  never  seems  to  come  out," 
said  the  voice  proceeding  from  under  the 
lamp. 

"  No,  dear  ?  " 

"  No.  I  think  I  shall  have  to  give  it  up 
for  an  easier  one.  It's  so  irritating  when 
things  won't  go  right." 

"  I  should  try  an  easier  one  to-morrow." 

"  To-morrow  ?  Oh,  I  see,  you  want  to  go 
to  bed.  I  must  say,  I  should  rather  have 
liked  to  try  it  this  evening,  but  if  you  want 
to  go  to  bed  .  .  ." 

"  No,  dear,  of  course  not ;  try  your 
Patience  by  all  means." 

"  No,  dear  ;  I  wouldn't  dream  of  it,  as  you 
want  to  go  to  bed.  Besides,  to-morrow  will 
do  just  as  well.  You  will  go  round,  won't 
you,  and  see  that  everything  is  properly 
locked  up  ?  " 

"  But  I  am  dragging  you  to  bed  when  you 
don't  want  to  go." 

"  Not  a  bit,  Paul,  I  assure  you ;  it  is 
quite  all  right.  I  am  really  quite  sleepy 
myself.  I  should  have  liked  to  try  the 
Patience,  perhaps,  but  to-morrow  will  do 
just  as  well," 


190  PATIENCE 

He  held  the  door  open  gravely  for  her,  but 
there  were  several  things  she  must  attend  to 
before  leaving  the  room  :  the  fire  must  be 
poked  down  so  that  no  spark  could  be  spat 
out  on  to  the  hearth-rug  ;  the  drawer  of  her 
writing-table  must  be  locked  so  that  the 
housemaid  should  not  read  her  letters  or 
examine  her  bills  when  dusting  the  room 
before  breakfast  on  the  following  morning ; 
and  the  book  which  she  had  been  reading 
must  be  replaced  in  the  bookcase.  He  en- 
dured all  this  ritual  without  betraying  any 
irritation,  watching  even  the  final  pats  which 
she  gave  to  the  cushions  of  his  chair. 

"  It's  quite  all  right,  Paul,  dear  ;  of  course 
one  can't  help  crumpling  cushions  when  one 
sits  on  them,  and  what  are  they  there  for  but 
to  be  sat  on  ?  " 

She  bustled  out  of  the  room,  calling  back 
to  him  as  she  mounted  the  stairs  :  "  You 
won't  forget  to  lock  up,  will  you  ?  " 

He  had  remembered  to  lock  up  now  for 
twenty  years.  He  went  methodically  about 
the  business,  looking  behind  curtains  to  see 
whether  the  shutters  were  closed,  testing  the 
chain  on  the  front  door.  All  that  parapher- 
nalia of  security !  He  felt  sometimes  that  the 
cold,  the  poor,  and  the  hungry  were  welcome 


PATIENCE  191 

to  the  embers  of  his  drawing-room  fire,  to  the 
silver  off  his  sideboard,  and  to  the  remains  of 
the  wine  in  his  decanters.  And  as  he  stood 
for  a  moment  at  the  garden  door,  looking  up 
the  gravel  path  of  his  trim  little  garden,  and 
felt  the  biting  cold  beneath  the  slip  of  new 
moon,  he  wondered  with  a  sort  of  anguish 
where  she  was,  whether  she  was  sheltered  and 
cared  for,  or  whether  in  her  gay  improvident 
way  she  had  gone  down  and  under,  until  on 
such  a  winter's  night  as  this  there  remained 
no  comfort  for  her  but  such  as  she  might 
find  among  the  mirrors  and  garish  lights  of  a 
bar,  in  such  fortuitous  company  as  she  might 
charm  with  a  vivacious  manner  and  an 
affectation  of  laughter.  She  had  from  time 
to  time  been  haunted  by  a  premonition  of 
such  things,  he  remembered ;  a  mocking 
wistfulness  had  come  into  her  voice  when  she 
said,  "  You'll  always  be  all  right,  Paul,  you 
were  born  prosperous  ;  but  as  for  me,  I'll 
end  my  days  among  the  dregs  of  the  world — 
I  know  it,  so  think  of  me  sometimes  when  you 
sit  over  your  Madeira  and  your  cigar,  won't 
you?  and  wonder  whether  my  nose  isn't 
pushed  against  your  window  in  the  hopes 
that  the  smell  of  your  cooking  might  drift 
out  to  me,"  and  when  she  had  said  these 


192  PATIENCE 

things  he  had  put  his  hand  over  her  mouth 
to  stop  the  words  he  couldn't  bear  to  hear, 
and  she  had  laughed  and  had  repeated, 
66  Well,  well,  we'll  see." 

He  shut  the  door  carefully  and  shot  the 
bolt  into  its  socket.  Very  cold  it  was — silly 
of  him  to  stand  at  the  open  door  like  that — 
hoped  he  hadn't  got  a  chill.  Lighting  his 
candle  in  the  hall,  he  switched  off  all  the 
electric  lights  and  climbed  the  stairs  to  bed  ; 
a  nice  fire  warmed  his  dressing-room,  and  his 
pyjamas  were  put  out  for  him  over  the  back 
of  a  chair  in  front  of  the  fire  ;  he  undressed, 
thinking  that  he  was  glad  he  wasn't  a  poor 
devil  out  in  the  cold.  His  wife  was  already 
in  bed,  and  by  the  light  of  her  reading-lamp 
he  saw  the  curlers  that  framed  her  forehead, 
and  the  feather-stitching  in  white  floss-silk 
round  the  collar  of  her  flannel  nightgown. 

"  What  a  long  time  you've  been,  Paul.  I 
was  just  thinking,  I  shan't  be  able  to  try  that 
Patience  to-morrow  evening,  because  we've 
got  the  Howard-Ellises  coming  to  dinner." 

"  So  we  have.  I'd  quite  forgotten.  We 
must  give  them  champagne,"  he  said 
mechanically  ;  "  they'll  expect  it." 

He  got  into  bed,  turned  out  the  lamp,  and 
lay  down  beside  his  wife,  staring  into  the  dark. 


HER  SON 
To  H.  M. 


SHE  awoke  that  morning  earlier  than  was 
her  wont,  emerging  from  a  delicious  sleep  into 
a  waking  no  less  pleasant.  Lazily  she  slipped 
her  hand  under  her  pillows — there  were  a 
lot  of  pillows,  all  very  downy,  into  which  her 
head  and  shoulders  sank  as  into  a  nest ;  she 
liked  a  lot  of  pillows  ;  that  was  one  of  her 
little  luxuries,  and  she  was  in  the  habit  of 
saying,  what  was  one's  own  house  if  not  a 
place  where  one's  little  luxuries  could  be 
indulged  ? — lazily  she  slipped  her  hand  under 
the  pillows,  feeling  about,  and  having  found 
what  she  wanted,  pressed  the  spring  of  the 
repeater  watch  lying  there  tucked  away.  Its 
tiny,  melodious  chime  came  to  her,  muffled 
but  distinct.  Seven  clear  little  bells  ;  then 
two  chimes  for  the  half-hour ;  then  five 
quick  busy  strokes  ;  five-and-twenty  minutes 
to  eight.  Five-and-twenty  minutes  still 
before  she  would  be  called.  She  lay  con- 
tentedly on  her  back,  with  her  arms  folded 
beneath  her  head,  watching  the  daylight 

195 


196  HER   SON 

increase  through  the  short  chintz  curtains  of 
her  windows  opposite.  The  chintz,  a  shiny 
one,  was  lined  with  pink ;  the  light  came 
through  it,  pink  and  tempered.  She  lay 
wondering  whether  she  should  get  up  to  pull 
the  curtains  aside,  but  she  was  so  comfortable, 
so  softly  warm,  and  in  so  pleasant  a  frame  of 
mind,  that  she  would  not  break  the  hour  by 
moving.  She  had  a  little  world  inside  her 
head  to-day  making  her  independent  of  the 
world  outside.  And  besides,  she  knew  so 
well  what  she  would  see,  even  did  she  make 
the  effort  and  get  up  to  pull  the  curtains  ; 
she  would  see  what  she  had  seen  every  day 
for  forty  years,  the  barn  with  the  orange 
lichen  on  the  roof,  the  church  tower,  the 
jumbled  roofs  of  the  village,  the  bare  beauti- 
ful limbs  of  the  distant  Downs  ;  she  knew  it 
all,  knew  it  with  the  knowledge  of  love  ;  and 
yet,  in  spite  of  this  intimate  knowledge,  she 
was  frequently  heard  to  remark  that  the 
country  had  always  some  new  surprise,  some 
gradation  of  light  one  had  never  seen  before, 
so  that  one  was  always  on  the  look-out  and 
one's  interest  kept  alive  from  day  to  day. 
The  seasons  in  themselves  constituted  a 
surprise  to  which,  in  her  five-and- sixty  years 
of  life,  she  had  never  grown  accustomed ; 


HER   SON  197 

she  forgot  each  beauty  as  it  became  replaced 
by  a  newer  beauty  ;  in  the  delight  of  spring 
she  forgot  the  etched  austerity  of  winter,  and 
in  winter  she  forgot  the  flowers  of  spring,  so 
it  was  always  with  a  naive  astonishment  that 
she  recognized  the  arrival  of  a  new  season, 
and  each  one  as  it  became  established  seemed 
to  her  the  best.  A  discovery  took  some  time 
before  it  settled  itself  into  its  place  in  the 
working  of  her  mind,  but,  once  there,  it  held 
with  a  gentle  obstinacy,  and,  because  there 
were  not  very  many  of  these  discoveries,  none 
of  them  were  very  far  away  from  the  circling 
current  of  her  thoughts.  Nor  was  she  eager 
for  fresh  acquaintances  among  her  thoughts, 
any  more  than  for  fresh  acquisitions  among  her 
friends  ;  just  as  she  liked  faces  to  be  familiar, 
so  she  liked  ideas  to  be  well-tested  and  proven 
before  she  admitted  them  to  the  privilege  of 
her  intimacy;  the  presence  of  strangers  was  an 
inconvenience  ;  good  manners  forbade  little 
jokes  from  which  strangers  were  excluded, 
little  allusive  or  reminiscent  smiles  in  which 
they  could  not  share.  It  followed,  logically 
enough — although  she  enjoyed  the  small, 
carefully-chosen  dinner  parties  she  gave  once 
a  fortnight  on  summer  evenings — that  she 
was  really  happiest  alone  with  her  house  and 


198  HER   SON 

garden,  because,  as  she  said,  one  never  knows 
anybody  so  well  as  one  knows  oneself,  and 
even  one's  most  approved  friends  are  apt  to 
contradict  or  to  disagree,  or  to  advance 
unforeseen  opinions ;  to  disconcert,  in  fact,  in 
a  variety  of  ways  impossible  to  the  silent 
acquiescence  of  plants  or  furniture ;  and 
the  one  person  whose  constant  companion- 
ship she  would  have  chosen,  had  hitherto 
been  absent. 

She  was  perfectly  happy  now  as  she  lay 
waiting  for  eight  o'clock  and  the  beginning  of 
the  day,  agreeable  anticipations  floating  in 
her  mind  as  her  eyes  wandered  over  the 
comfort  of  her  room,  from  the  chintz  curtains 
to  the  bright  stoppered  bottles  and  silver  on 
her  dressing-table,  from  the  small  bookcase 
full  of  nicely-bound  books  to  the  row  of 
photographs  on  the  mantelpiece.  All  was 
very  still.  One  of  the  curtains  bellied  out  a 
little  in  front  of  an  open  window.  From  time 
to  time  a  smile  hovered  over  her  lips,  and 
once  she  gave  a  sigh,  and  moved  slightly  in 
her  bed,  as  though  the  very  perfection  of  her 
thoughts  were  giving  her  a  deliciously  uneasy 
rapture.  But  she  never  allowed  herself  to 
indulge  for  long  in  reveries  which,  however 
pleasant  they  might  be,  led  to  nothing  prac- 


HER   SON  199 

tical.  She  knew  that  she  had  a  great  deal 
to  see  to  that  morning ;  and  if  all  were  not 
done  in  an  orderly  way,  something  would  be 
forgotten.  She  stretched  out  her  hand  and 
took  from  off  the  table  by  her  bed  a  memoran- 
dum book,  fitted  with  a  pencil  and  bound  in 
green  leather,  across  which  was  written  in 
gilt  lettering,  "  While  I  remember  it" 

With  the  pencil  poised  above  the  first  fair 
page,  she  paused.  Would  it  be  better  to 
execute  her  business  in  the  village  first,  or  to 
do  what  she  had  to  do  about  the  house  ?  The 
village  first,  by  all  means ;  if  any  of  the  trades- 
men made  a  mistake,  there  would  be  the  more 
time  to  rectify  their  blunder.  She  began, 
in  her  mind,  her  journey  up  the  village  street, 
stopping  at  the  stationer's,  the  grocer's,  the 
fishmonger's. 

How  difficult  it  was  to  cater  for  the  wants 
of  a  man  !  So  long  since  she  had  done  it ; 
she  had  lost  the  habit.  What  would  he 
want  ?  The  Times.  She  noted  "  Times" 
and  added,  after  a  long  concentration,  "  The 
Field"  Then  she  remembered  that  he  liked 
J  pens ;  she  herself  always  used  Relief ; 
how  lucky  that  she  had  thought  of  that. 
There  was  nothing  else  from  the  stationer's  ; 
of  all  the  ordinary  requirements,  writing- 


200  HER   SON 

paper,  blotting-paper,  ink,  pencils,  gummed 
labels,  elastic  bands,  envelopes  of  assorted 
sizes,  she  kept  in  her  cupboard  an  exhaustive 
store.  The  grocer  next ;  and  she  had  already, 
a  long  way  back,  when  she  first  heard  that 
Henry  was  coming,  made  a  note  that  he  liked 
preserved  ginger.  She  renewed  this  note, 
neatly,  under  the  proper  heading  in  her  list : 
Ginger,  Brazil  nuts,  a  small  Stilton,  anchovies 
— he  would  want  a  savoury  for  dinner,  and 
he  should  have  it — chutney.  She  could  not 
think  of  anything  else,  but  once  she  was  in 
the  shop  she  could  look  round  and  perhaps  see 
something  that  he  would  like.  She  passed 
on  to  the  fishmonger's,  and  with  a  delighted 
smile  wrote  down,  "  Herring  roes "  and 
"  Kippers."  How  amused  and  pleased  he 
would  be  when  he  realized  how  well  she  had 
remembered  all  his  tastes!  Not  the  taste 
he  had  when  he  was  a  little  boy,  and  which  she 
might  have  remembered  out  of  sentiment ; 
no,  he  should  see  that  she  had  kept  pace  with 
his  years,  and  remembered  his  preferences  as 
a  man  up  to  five  years  ago,  when  she  had  last 
seen  him. 

She  had  finished  now  with  the  village, 
for  all  the  more  staple  requirements  had,  of 
course,  been  ordered  at  the  beginning  of  the 


HER  SON  201 

week,  and  these  were  only  the  extras  which 
she  had  treasured  up  to  do  herself  on  the  last 
morning.  There  was  more  to  be  seen  to  at 
home.  Flowers — no,  she  need  not  make  a 
note  of  that ;  she  would  not  forget  to  do  the 
flowers.  But  there  were  other  things  which, 
unless  noted,  might  slip  her  memory  : 

"  Order  the  motor ;  eggs  (brown)  for 
breakfast ;  honey  ;  fire  in  his  room  ;  put 
out  the  port ;  put  out  the  cigars ;  early 
morning  tea." 

At  that  moment  she  heard  the  church 
clock  beginning  to  strike  eight,  and  with  a 
knock  on  the  door  her  maid  came  in,  carrying 
a  little  tray  in  one  hand  and  a  can  of  hot 
water  in  the  other.  There  were  a  few  letters 
slipped  under  the  edge  of  the  saucer  on  the 
tray,  and  Mrs.  Martin  read  them  while  she 
drank  her  tea,  but  they  were  not  very  inter- 
esting, only  the  annual  appeal  from  the  local 
gardeners'  society — she  thought  it  unthrifty 
to  send  that  by  post,  when  it  could  so  easily 
have  been  left  by  hand — a  couple  of  bills,  a 
bulb  catalogue  from  Holland  ("  Early  every 
morning  will  be  seen  dozens  of  parties  of  men, 
women  and  children  tramping  up  the  moun- 
tains between  France  and  Spain,  singing  the 
popular  song  of  Harry  Lauder,  c  We're  all 


202  HER   SON 

going  the  same  way,  we've  all  gone  down  the 
hills.'  Now  perhaps  you  will  ask  me  why 
I  tell  this  in  a  Bulb  Catalogue,  and  here  I 
will  give  you  the  answer  :  In  the  valleys  of 
those  beautiful  Pyrenees  mountains  live  nu- 
merous daffodils,  which  are  the  richest  flow- 
ering of  these  garden-friends  I  ever  meeted. 
Will  you  not  try  a  couple  of  hundred  from 
our  stock  ?  and  you  will  be  convinced  to 
have  invested  fife  bob  on  the  good  horse."), 
and  a  letter  from  her  sister  in  Devon  which 
she  put  aside  to  read  later  on.  The  maid 
moved  about  the  room,  putting  everything 
ready  very  quietly  and  skilfully.  The  cur- 
tains were  drawn  back  now,  and  from  her  bed 
Mrs.  Martin  could  see  the  wide  autumn  sky, 
gold-brown  behind  the  scarlet  trail  of  splay- 
leaved  Virginia  creeper  that  hung  down  out- 
side the  window.  She  was  glad  that  it  was 
neither  raining  nor  windy.  She  would  have 
the  motor  opened  before  it  started  for  the 
station. 

The  day  had  really  begun. 

A  rising  tide  of  excitement  made  her  want 
very  much  to  talk  to  Williams,  but  this  was 
against  her  principles,  and  she  restrained 
herself.  She  kept  glancing  at  Williams  when- 
ever the  maid's  back  was  turned,  or  her  head 


HER   SON  203 

bent  over  the  linen  in  the  tidy  drawers,  and 
opening  her  lips  to  speak,  but  the  remark 
faded  away  each  time  into  a  nervous  smile, 
which  she  concealed  by  drinking  again  from 
her  cup  of  tea.  But  when  Williams  came 
and  stood  by  her  bed  to  say,  "  The  bath  is 
quite  ready,  ma'am,"  she  could  not  prevent 
herself  from  speaking ;  she  wanted  to  say, 
"  You  know,  it's  to-day,  Williams,  to-day! ': 
but  instead  of  that  she  said,  with  detachment, 
"Is  it  a  fine  morning,  Williams  ? "  and 
Williams  replied,  respectful  as  ever,  "  A 
beautiful  morning,  ma'am,"  but  Mrs.  Martin, 
as  she  got  out  of  bed  and  slid  her  feet  into  the 
warmed  bedroom  slippers  that  were  waiting 
for  her,  felt  that  between  herself  and  Williams 
a  perfectly  satisfactory  understanding  existed. 

II 

SHE  came  downstairs  in  due  course,  dressed 
in  a  brown  holland  dress  with  a  big  black 
straw  hat  tied  with  black  ribbons  under  her 
chin.  Her  fresh  old  face  looked  soft  and 
powdered,  her  white  hair  escaped  in  puffs 
from  under  her  hat,  on  her  nose  she  wore  a 
pair  of  round  horn  spectacles,  and  on  her 
hands  a  pair  of  big  brown  leather  gauntlets, 
o 


204  HER   SON 

Over  her  arm  she  carried  a  garden  basket,  a 
pair  of  garden  scissors  dangling  by  a  ribbon 
from  the  handle.  She  was  going  to  do  the 
flowers  first ;  one  never  knew,  at  this  time  of 
year,  whether  a  sudden  shower  might  not 
come  down  and  dash  their  beauty. 

In  the  hall,  at  the  bottom  of  the  stairs,  the 
grandfather  clock  ticked  quietly.  The  doors 
all  stood  open  ;  looking  to  the  left  she  could 
see  into  the  sitting-room,  with  its  deep, 
chintz-covered  chairs  and  sofas;  looking  to 
the  right,  down  the  passage,  into  the  dining- 
room,  where  presently  luncheon  would  be 
laid  for  two  ;  and  straight  ahead  of  her,  facing 
the  stairs,  was  the  front-door,  which  opened 
on  to  the  little  forecourt  and  the  flagged  path 
leading  up  to  the  porch.  She  went  out. 
Some  white  pigeons  were  sunning  themselves 
on  the  roof  of  the  great  barn  ;  its  doors  were 
propped  open,  and  a  farm-hand  came  out, 
followed  by  two  farm  horses,  their  hoofs 
going  clop-clop  after  him,  their  harness 
clanking  loosely,  and  their  blinkers  and  the 
high  peaks  of  their  collars  studded  with 
shining  brass  nails.  Their  tails  and  manes 
were  plaited  up  with  straw  and  red  braid. 
Mrs.  Martin  nodded  to  the  man,  as  he  touched 
his  cap  to  her,  and  stood  looking  after  the 


HER  SON  205 

horses  lumbering  their  way  out  towards  the 
lane.  She  liked  having  the  farm  so  close  at 
hand,  and  had  never  thought  of  putting  the 
barn,  although  it  stood  so  near  the  house, 
forming  one  side  of  the  forecourt,  to  any  other 
than  farm  uses.  She  went  across  the  court 
now,  and  looked  into  it.  A  smell  of  dust  and 
sacking  ;  gold  motes  in  a  shaft  of  sunlight ; 
two  farm  waggons  with  red  and  blue  wheels  ; 
a  pile  of  yellow  straw,  and  some  trusses  of 
hay.  She  was  very  well  content.  Behind 
the  barn  stood  the  rickyard,  and  here  were 
the  garnered  stacks,  pointed  like  witches' 
hats,  a  double  row  of  them  :  the  farm  was 
doing  well.  When  the  time  came,  she  would 
have  a  prosperous  inheritance  to  bequeath 
to  her  son. 

She  turned  away  from  the  shadows  of  the 
barn,  and  went  through  the  door  in  the  wall 
that  led  into  the  garden.  It  was  quite  warm  ; 
the  ground  steamed  slightly,  so  that  a  faint 
mist  hung  low,  and  everything  was  wet,  with 
but  a  dangerously  narrow  margin  between 
the  last  splendour  of  autumn  and  its  first 
sodden  decay.  She  walked  slowly  up  the 
garden  path,  looking  at  the  bronze,  red,  yellow 
and  orange  flowers  that  were  bent  down  to- 
wards the  ground  by  the  moisture ;  she 


206  HER   SON 

walked  up  to  the  path,  swinging  her  scissors, 
till  she  came  to  the  clump  of  Scotch  firs  at 
the  top  of  the  garden,  and  stood  surveying 
the  country  that  swept  down  to  the  valley, 
rising  to  the  Downs  beyond,  the  woods  in  the 
valley  golden  through  the  mist,  and  blue 
smoke  hanging  above  the  deep  violet  pools  of 
shadow,  between  the  woods  and  the  hills; 
all  unstirred  by  any  breath  ;  rust-colour  and 
blue  in  every  shade  from  the  pale  tan  of  the 
stubble  to  the  fire  of  the  woods,  from  the 
wreathing  smoke-blue  to  the  depths  of  ame- 
thyst driven  like  wedges  into  the  flanks  of 
the  Downs.  Below  the  clump  of  Scotch  firs 
the  ground  fell  away  rapidly ;  in  the  valley 
gleamed  a  sudden  silver  twist  of  the  river. 
The  river  was  Mrs.  Martin's  boundary,  the 
natural  frontier  to  her  eight  hundred  acres. 
They  had  not  always  been  eight  hundred 
acres.  Once  they  had  only  been  five  hundred, 
and  only  thanks  to  stringent  frugality  and 
a  certain  astuteness  on  Mrs.  Martin's  part  had 
they  been  extended  to  that  natural  frontier 
which  was  the  river.  She  could  not  think 
of  that  astuteness  now  without  a  measure  of 
discomfort.  Had  she  been  quite  as  fair  as  she 
might  have  been — quite  as  scrupulous  ?  Would 
she  ever  have  persuaded  Mr.  Thistlethwaite 


HER   SON  207 

to  part  with  the  required  three  hundred  if 
she  hadn't  canvassed  for  him  quite  so  enthu- 
siastically before  the  poll  ?  Was  she  quite 
sure  that  she  agreed  with  all  his  political 
convictions  ?  Was  she  even  sure  that  she 
understood  them  ?  She  dismissed  these 
qualms,  hurriedly  and  furtively,  when  they 
nudged  her.  Anyway,  the  three  hundred 
acres  were  hers,  and  whatever  she  had  done, 
she  had  done  it  for  her  son ;  let  that  be  her 
defence  in  everything.  She  would  bring 
him  out  here  after  luncheon,  and  he  would 
stand  looking  over  the  valley,  and  possibly 
he  would  say,  as  he  had  said  once  before, 
years  ago,  "  I  wish  our  land  went  down  as  far 
as  the  river,  don't  you  ?  "  And  then  in  a 
great  moment  she  would  reply  "  It  does!  ': 
For  she  had  never  told  him  about  the  extra 
three  hundred  acres ;  she  had  kept  that 
secret  out  of  the  long  weekly  letter  she  had 
written  to  him  overseas  during  all  the  five 
years  of  his  absence.  There  was  no  detail  of 
her  life  that  she  hadn't  told  him ;  she  had 
told  him,  separately,  about  each  of  her  dinner 
parties  ;  about  the  work  on  the  farm,  and 
about  the  agricultural  experiments  that  she 
and  Lynes,  the  bailiff,  were  making,  their 
failure  or  their  success ;  she  had  kept  him 


208  HER   SON 

informed  of  all  the  events  in  the  village  ;  but 
the  three  hundred  acres  she  had  hugged  to 
herself  as  a  secret  and  a  surprise.  Lynes  was 
her  accomplice ;  she  had  had  to  warn  him 
that  he  must  never  let  out  the  secret  should 
he  have  occasion  to  write  to  Mr.  Henry.  It 
had  created  a  great  link  between  herself  and 
Lynes.  There  had,  of  course,  been  the  danger 
that  somebody  or  other  in  the  district  would 
be  writing  to  Henry  on  other  matters,  and 
would  mention  his  mother's  purchase  ;  but 
up  to  the  present  it  was  clear  from  Henry's 
letters  that  no  one  had  done  so.  He  had 
written  to  her  with  fair  regularity,  though 
not  so  often  as  she  could  have  wished ;  but 
then  she  would  have  liked  a  letter  by  every 
mail,  as  he  received  from  her,  and  that  was 
unreasonable ;  and  though  sometimes  his 
letters  were  brief,  and  clearly  written  in  a 
hurry,  she  was  too  loyal  to  ask  herself  what  he 
could  possibly  have  to  do  with  his  evenings 
on  a  ranch  where  work  would  be  finished  by 
dusk. 

She  turned  back  along  the  path,  and  began 
cutting  flowers  wherewith  she  filled  her  bas- 
ket. She  cut  very  carefully  where  it  would 
not  show.  No  one  else  was  allowed  to  cut 
the  flowers.  She  was  especially  proud  of  this, 


HER  SON  209 

her  autumn  border.  On  either  side  of  the 
path,  until  it  was  brought  up  short  at  the  end 
by  the  grey  walls  of  the  manor-house,  it 
smouldered  in  broad  bands  that  repeated  the 
colours  of  the  autumn  woods.  Orange  snap- 
dragon, marigold,  and  mimulus  flowing  for- 
ward on  to  the  flagged  path ;  then  the  bronze 
of  coreopsis  and  helenium,  stabbed  by  the 
lance-like  spires  of  red-hot  poker  ;  and  be- 
hind them  the  almost  incredible  brilliance  of 
dahlias  reared  against  the  background  of 
dark  yew  hedge.  The  border  streamed  away 
like  a  flaming  tongue  from  the  cool  grey  of 
the  house.  She  had  worked  very  hard  and 
studied  much  to  bring  it  to  its  present  per- 
fection ;  ten  years  of  labour  had  at  last  been 
rewarded.  Behind  the  yew  hedges,  to  either 
side,  were  squares  of  old  orchard,  and  the 
bright  red  apples  nodded  over  the  hedges  like 
so  many  bright  eyes  peeping  at  the  borders. 
In  the  grass  under  the  apple-trees  the  bulbs 
lay  dormant,  that  in  the  spring  speckled  the 
orchards  with  grape-hyacinths,  anemones, 
and  narcissi ;  but  Mrs.  Martin  had  forgotten 
about  the  spring.  She  was  thinking,  as  she 
cut  sheaves  from  the  coreopsis  and,  more 
sparingly,  from  the  snapdragons,  that  the 
autumn  border  was  really  the  finest  sight  of 


210  HER  SON 

the  year,  and  that  she  was  glad  Henry  should 
be  coming  now,  and  at  no  other  time. 

In  the  house,  where  she  had  everything 
conveniently  arranged  in  the  garden-room — 
a  sink,  taps,  cloths  for  wiping  the  glasses, 
and  a  cupboard  full  of  flower-vases — she 
proceeded  leisurely  to  do  the  flowers.  No 
one  had  ever  known  Mrs.  Martin  be  anything 
but  leisurely ;  she  always  had  plenty  to 
occupy  her  time,  but  she  was  never  hurried 
or  ruffled.  It  was  one  of  her  greatest  charms. 
She  selected  the  flower  vases  with  nice  care; 
some  were  of  rough  pottery,  but  those  now 
stood  on  one  side,  for  she  consecrated  them  to 
the  spring  flowers  and  to  the  roses  ;  others 
were  of  glass,  like  green  bubbles,  glaucous 
and  irridescent,  light  to  the  hand — for  Mrs. 
Martin  could  not  bear  glasses  that  were  not 
delicately  blown,  and  as  no  one  ever  touched 
them  except  herself,  they  never  got  broken. 
She  had  a  genius  for  handling  fragility, 
quick  and  deft,  and  curiously  tender.  She 
was  now  wondering  whether  Henry's  wife 
would  some  day  stand  in  her  place  at  the  sink 
in  the  garden-room.  She  often  wondered 
this,  for  Henry's  wife  was  a  personage  she  had 
long  since  absorbed  into  her  thoughts.  She 
thought  of  her  without  bitterness  or  jealousy, 


HER   SON  211 

simply  as  a  part  of  Henry,  and  consequently 
as  another  person  to  whom  she  would,  in  due 
course,  have  to  hand  over  the  house,  the 
garden,  and  the  estate — to  render  an  account 
of  her  stewardship.  Mrs.  Martin  was  think- 
ing about  her  as  she  snipped  the  ends  off 
stalks  that  were  too  long,  and  lifted  the  vases 
that  were  already  filled  on  to  the  tray  stand- 
ing ready  to  receive  them.  It  made  no  differ- 
ence that  Henry  should  not  yet  have  come 
across  his  wife  ;  she  was  not  thereby  entitled, 
in  Mrs.  Martin's  eyes,  to  any  separate  exis- 
tence of  her  own.  She  was  Henry's  wife  ;  the 
future  mistress,  when  Mrs.  Martin  was  dead, 
of  the  house  and  all  it  contained.  It  had 
taken  a  very  long  time  for  Mrs.  Martin's  mind 
to  grow  accustomed  to  this  idea,  but  now 
that  it  was  there  she  accepted  it  quite  placidly, 
and  it  came  up  in  its  turn  for  examination 
amongst  the  other  ideas,  or  was  taken  out 
when  she  wanted  something  to  think  about. 
She  had  even  got  into  the  way  of  saying  to 
Lynes,  or  to  the  gardener,  "  I'm  sure  that 
Mrs.  Henry  would  approve  of  that,"  and  if,  at 
first,  they  had  been  a  little  surprised,  they 
had  quickly  come  to  take  Mrs.  Henry  quite 
for  granted.  She  had  even  an  affection  for 
Henry's  wife.  She  liked  to  think  of  them 


212  HER   SON 

living  here  together  in  the  country,  so  far 
away  from  London — the  country  that  was 
England  although  London  forgot  about  it — 
and  of  Henry  tramping  over  the  eight  hun- 
dred acres  with  a  gun  and  a  spaniel,  while  his 
wife  stooped  over  the  flowers  in  the  walled 
garden,  and  she  never  doubted  that  they 
would  frequently  recall  her,  who  had  made 
the  place  what  it  was  ;  recall  her  with  a  sort 
of  grudging  tenderness — she  was  too  humanly 
wise  a  woman  to  expect  more  than  that — and 
say,  "  The  old  lady  ought  to  rest  quietly  in 
her  grave.  ..."  She  carried  the  tray  of 
flowers  into  the  hall,  and  from  there  distri- 
buted them  ;  a  big  vase  of  coreopsis  on  each 
window  sill  in  the  sitting-room,  a  bowl  of 
marigolds  on  the  table  where  the  light  of  the 
lamp  would  fall  straight  on  to  them  in  the 
evening,  a  bowl  of  snapdragons  in  the  centre 
of  the  hall,  red  and  yellow  nasturtiums  on  the 
dining-room  table.  There  remained  two  little 
pots  of  snapdragon,  which  she  took  upstairs 
and  put  on  the  dressing-table  in  his  bedroom. 
She  came  down  again.  The  bronze  of  the 
flowers,  she  thought,  suited  the  house,  with 
its  bits  of  oak  panelling,  the  polished  stairs 
of  a  golden-brown,  and  the  pile  carpet  of 
mouse-brown  in  the  sitting-room.  She 


HER   SON  213 

was  pleased  with  her  survey,  though  a 
little  tired.  She  heaved  the  sigh  of  happy 
tiredness.  Five  years  alone  here,  alone  ex- 
cept for  the  neighbours  ;  and  although  she 
liked  being  alone,  and  was  quite  content 
between  Lynes  and  her  garden  in  the  day- 
time, and  her  books  in  the  evening,  she  was 
very  glad  that  Henry — who  was  really  her 
unseen  and  constant  companion,  at  the  back 
of  her  mind  in  everything  she  did — should  be 
coming  back  to  her  at  last. 

m  ( 

SHE  watched  the  motor  as  it  drove  off  to  the 
station.  She  had  had  it  opened,  and  had 
sent  a  number  of  coats  and  rugs  with  it  lest 
Henry  should  be  cold.  By  this  time  she  was 
completely  tired  out,  having  pursued  her 
self-imposed  business  down  to  its  minutest 
detail,  but  the  consciousness  that  she  had 
done  everything  she  had  to  do  buoyed  her 
up  with  the  pleasure  of  virtue.  Although 
she  knew  that  she  could  not  expect  the  motor 
back  for  at  least  half-an-hour,  she  enveloped 
herself  in  an  old  brown  cape  and  went  to 
sit  on  the  little  bench  in  the  porch.  The 
mist  had  by  now  been  completely  dispersed 


214  HER   SON 

by  the  sun,  which  had  rolled  it  away  in  curls 
and  shavings  of  vapour,  that  clung  about  the 
trees  as  though  reluctant  to  go,  and  finally 
melted  away,  leaving  a  day  full  of  damp  gold, 
with  the  pheasants  calling  in  the  distance 
along  the  margins  of  the  fields  nearest  to 
the  coppices.  Mrs.  Martin  sat  in  the  porch 
with  her  feet  propped  up  on  the  opposite 
bench.  She  rested  contentedly,  folding  her 
old  brown  cloak  round  her,  and  letting  her 
head  nod  under  its  big  black  straw  hat  as  she 
dozed.  She  looked  like  some  old  shepherd 
nodding  after  his  dinner  hour.  The  pigeons 
came  and  pecked  about  under  her  feet  for 
stray  grains  of  maize,  and  were  joined  by 
some  chickens  from  the  farmyard  that  came 
scurrying  across  the  court,  the  big  Rhode 
Island  Reds  and  the  white  Wyandottes  with 
their  bright  yellow  legs  prinking  round  and 
squawking  as  all  their  heads  met  in  a  rush 
over  the  same  grain.  Mrs.  Martin  smiled 
as  she  dozed,  like  a  mother  smiling  indulgently 
at  the  squabble  of  her  children.  The  sun- 
light fell  in  a  sharp  line  across  the  flag- stone 
of  the  porch.  Little  bright  drops  of  moisture 
formed  on  the  hairy  tweed  of  Mrs.  Martin's 
cloak  where  her  gentle  and  regular  breathing 
blew  down  the  front  of  it.  She  had  not  meant 


HER   SON  215 

to  go  to  sleep.  She  would  not  have  believed 
that  she  could  go  to  sleep  while  she  was 
actually  waiting  for  the  arrival  of  Henry. 
Five  years — and  then,  at  the  end  of  it,  to 
sleep!  But  she  was  old,  and  she  had  been 
busy  all  the  morning,  and  she  was  tired. 
She  slept  on,  with  the  pigeons  and  chickens 
still  pecking,  quietly  now,  under  her  feet. 

IV 

HENRY  was  there ;  he  arrived  cheerful  and 
full  of  good-will.  If,  coming  down  in  the 
train — three  hours  ;  how  could  anyone,  good 
Lord,  so  bury  themselves  in  the  country 
when  they  weren't  obliged  to  ? — if,  coming 
down  in  the  train,  he  had  drilled  himself 
rather  deliberately  into  the  suitable  frame  of 
mind,  at  the  actual  moment  of  his  arrival  he 
found  himself  unexpectedly  invaded  by  a 
rush  of  genuine  pleasure.  He  had  been 
touched  by  the  sudden  sight  of  his  mother 
asleep  in  the  porch,  wrapped  in  the  same  old 
cloak  which  he  well  remembered  ;  her  cheek, 
when  he  kissed  it,  had  been  so  cool  and  soft 
and  naturally  scented ;  and  her  confusion 
and  delight  had  both  been  so  sweet  and  so 
candid.  They  went  into  the  house  together, 


216  HER   SON 

eagerly  ;  he  put  down  his  hat  and  coat  on  the 
same  coffer  which  was  in  its  unaltered  place, 
and  still  the  warmth  of  homecoming  had  not 
deserted  him.  She  took  his  arm  and  led  him 
towards  the  sitting-room,  "  Not  much  change, 
you  see,  Henry  ;  I  had  to  have  new  covers 
for  the  chairs  and  the  sofa,  and  I  thought  it 
would  be  nice  to  have  them  a  little  different, 
but  everything  else  is  just  the  same.  Now  I 
expect  you'd  like  to  go  to  your  room  and  wash : 
I've  had  some  hot  water  put  there  for  you ; 
and  luncheon  will  be  ready  in  five  minutes." 
He  splashed  over  his  basin,  looking  round 
his  room  meanwhile  and  thinking  how  clean 
and  fresh  it  was,  and  how  jolly  the  view  out 
of  the  window  with  the  river  shining  down 
in  the  valley,  washing  his  hands  with  an 
energy  that  brought  the  soap  up  into  an 
instant  lather,  and  as  he  dried  them  on  the 
soft  huckaback  of  the  fringed  towel  he  smiled 
to  himself,  for  he  remembered  the  old  joke 
of  his  mother's  niceness  over  such  things  as 
linen.  He  unpacked  his  brushes  and  brushed 
his  hair  vigorously  ;  it  was  sleek  and  black, 
and  he  brushed  it  till  it  shone  like  a  top-hat. 
He  ran  downstairs,  jumping  the  last  six  steps 
and  shouting  out  to  his  mother.  He  felt 
quite  boyish.  He  put  his  hand  through  her 


HER   SON  217 

arm  and  drew  her  out  to  the  porch,  where 
they  stood  while  they  waited  for  luncheon. 
He  held  her  arm  close  to  his  side  in  a  posses- 
sive way.  They  were  both  very  gay,  and 
rather  tremulous. 


"  How  well  you  look,  Henry !  and  so  brown  ; 
why,  you  might  be  twenty  instead  of  nearly 
thirty.  Now  what  do  you  want  to  drink  ? 
claret,  beer,  cider.  .  .  .  Try  a  little  of  our 
cider,  it's  home-made,  last  season's  brew, 
and  I  think  we  have  got  in  exactly  the  right 
measure  of  wheat.  It  is  so  easy  to  make  a 
mistake — to  put  in  too  little  or  too  much — 
but  I  think  last  autumn  we  got  it  just  right." 

But  Henry  did  not  care  for  cider ;  he 
preferred  whisky  and  soda. 

"  Have  what  you  like,  of  course,  dear  boy. 
Here  are  my  keys,  Sandford  ;  get  the  bottle 
of  whisky  out  of  my  cupboard,  please,  and 
bring  it  for  Mr.  Henry,  and  let  me  have  the 
keys  back.  Dear  me,  Henry,  we  both  have  so 
much  to  say  to  one  another  that  it  makes  us 
quite  silent.  I  scarcely  know  where  to  begin. 
Never  mind,  it  will  all  come  out  little  by  little, 
and  we  have  plenty  of  time  before  us.  I 


218  HER   SON 

have  made  a  great  plan  of  all  I  want  to  show 
you  this  afternoon;  you  must  come  round  to 
the  farm  after  luncheon  and  speak  to  Lynes, 
and  I  daresay  he  will  like  to  have  a  whole  day 
with  you,  going  over  things,  to-morrow  or  the 
day  after  that.  ..." 

She  beamed  at  him  where  he  sat  opposite 
to  her,  at  the  end  of  the  table,  and  he  smiled 
back  at  her  ;  she  thought  how  nice-looking 
he  was,  with  his  lean,  brown  face  and  black 
hair.  He  had  the  look  of  hard  health  ;  she 
remembered  how  well  he  had  always  looked 
in  the  saddle.  It  had,  indeed,  been  a  great 
incentive  to  have  this  son  to  work  for ;  to 
guard  his  interests,  to  build  up  the  perfect 
little  estate  for  him  to  inherit.  The  studious 
evenings  she  had  spent  had  not  been  wasted  ; 
all  that  she  had  learnt,  conscientiously — for 
she  would  never  trust  wholly  to  Lynes' 
experience — about  manures,  the  rotation  of 
crops,  the  value  of  luzerne,  the  advantage  of 
fat  stock  over  dairy-produce,  all  that  labor- 
iously acquired  knowledge,  in  the  service  of 
such  a  son,  had  not  been  useless.  It  wasn't 
in  the  nature  of  women,  she  had  decided  long 
ago,  to  work  solely  for  the  sake  of  the  work  ; 
and  this  was  one  of  the  things  she  often  said, 
particularly  when  the  subject  of  women's 


HER  SON  219 

emancipation  was  mentioned.  How  impressed 
he  would  be,  after  luncheon,  when  she  took 
him  out!  He  would  expect  her  to  know 
about  the  garden ;  the  garden  had  always 
been  her  speciality  ;  but  he  should  find  that 
she  wasn't  a  docile  ignoramus  about  the 
farm,  a  mere  writer  of  cheques  to  Lynes' 
dictation.  She  beamed  at  him  again,  hug- 
ging her  satisfaction  to  herself.  She  was 
glad  that  she  had  not  been  born  a  man,  to 
work  for  work's  own  cold,  ungrateful  sake, 
but  a  woman,  to  work  for  the  warm  appre- 
ciation in  a  fellow-being's  eyes. 

And  Henry  was  charming  her,  as  she  had 
expected  to  be  charmed.  He  chaffed  her  a 
little,  and  she  fell  into  a  little  confusion,  not 
knowing  whether  to  take  him  seriously,  until 
she  perceived  that  he  was  laughing  and  then 
she  reproached  him  for  teasing  an  old  woman 
and  they  laughed  happily  together.  He  saw 
that  he  was  being  a  success,  and  expanded 
under  the  flattery.  He  teased  her  about  her 
old  cloak ;  she  found  an  exquisite  thrill  in 
the  proprietary  intimacy  with  which  this 
man,  who  was  like  a  stranger  to  her,  was  treat- 
ing her.  She  blushed  and  bridled  ;  and  the 
more  she  bridled  the  more  fondly  he  teased. 
His  eyes  were  narrowed  into  laughing  slits  ; 


220  HER  SON 

he  leant  over  to  her  as  he  might  have  leant, 
confidentially,  over  to  any  woman  with  whom 
he  happened  to  be  lunching.  She  thought, 
with  a  queer  envy,  of  the  future  Mrs.  Henry  ; 
and  the  thought  made  her  ask,  abruptly, 
"  You've  nothing  to  tell  me  about  yourself  ? 
You're  not  engaged,  I  mean,  or  thinking  of 
it?" 

Henry  looked  taken  aback  by  the  question; 
then  he  threw  back  his  head  and  laughed. 

"  Good  Lord,  who  to  ?  You  forget  I've 
been  in  the  heart  of  the  Argentine  for  five 
years." 

"  Oh  no,  I  don't  forget,"  she  said  softly, 
thinking  how  little  she  had  forgotten,  "  but 
one  finds  old  friends  in  London.  ...  I 
don't  know.  .  .  ." 

For  a  moment  he  seemed  embarrassed  ;  it 
passed. 

"  I've  not  been  in  London  forty-eight  hours 
and  I  had  plenty  of  other  things  to  do  there." 
He  said  it  glibly,  hoping  she  would  not 
wonder  what  he  had  done  with  his  evenings. 
She  did  not  wonder,  her  imagination  not 
readily  extending  to  restaurants  or  dancing 
places,  or  the  bare  shoulders  of  women  under 
a  slipping  opera  cloak.  She  had  forgotten 
about  those  things  ;  it  was  so  long  since  they 


HER  SON  221 

had  come  her  way,  even  remotely.  And  in 
spite  of  her  benevolence  towards  Mrs.  Henry 
she  was  conscious  of  a  fugitive  relief. 

"  Then  I  needn't  feel  selfish  about  keeping 
you  here,"  she  said,  "  and  it  will  be  a  nice 
rest  for  you  after  your  journey  and  all  the 
business  you  had  to  do  in  London.  Now  if 
you  have  quite  finished,  we  might  go  out  ? 
It  gets  dark  so  quickly."  They  went  out ; 
already  the  fresh  beauty  of  the  day  was 
passing,  it  was  colder,  and  there  was  more 
grey  and  less  gold  between  the  trees.  "  Let 
us  go  up  to  the  top  of  the  garden,"  said  Mrs. 
Martin,  who  felt  she  could  not  bear  to  keep  the 
secret  of  the  three  hundred  acres  to  herself  a 
moment  longer. 

VI 

THEY  went  slowly  up  the  garden  path  be- 
tween the  flaming  borders,  that  flamed  less 
now  that  the  sun  was  no  longer  on  them. 
She  noted  the  difference,  and  was  sorry  they 
should  not  be  showing  themselves  off  at  their 
best.  Nevertheless  Henry  said,  "  How  jolly 
your  flowers  are,  mother,"  and  she  was  satis- 
fied. She  had  taken  his  arm  ;  from  her  other 
hand  swung  her  inseparable  companion,  the 


222  HER   SON 

garden  basket,  and  from  sheer  habit  she  kept 
a  sharp  look  out  for  a  possible  weed.  Even 
though  Henry  was  there.  She  knew  now — 
now  that  he  was  there — how  lonely  had  been 
her  wanderings  up  that  garden  path,  and  how 
hollow,  really,  had  been  her  gardening 
triumphs  since  there  was  no  one  to  admire 
them  and  to  share.  Not  that  she  had  ever 
faced  the  fact ;  for  it  was  not  her  habit  to 
face  facts.  But  now,  since  it  had  become  a 
fact  only  in  the  past,  she  could  allow  herself 
to  turn  round  and  wave  it  a  little  belated, 
valedictory  gesture  of  recognition.  She 
pressed  Henry's  arm  ever  so  slightly  against 
her  side.  Not  enough  for  him  to  notice ; 
only  enough  to  give  herself  assurance  and 
comfort.  Stupid  of  her  not  to  have  realized 
how  much  she  wanted  Henry.  He  had  been 
always  in  the  background,  of  course,  and  she 
had  trained  herself  to  think  that  that  was 
enough ;  perhaps  it  was  fortunate,  rather 
than  stupid  ;  she  would  have  wanted  him  too 
much,  if  once  she  had  let  herself  begin  to 
think  about  it.  It  was  pleasant  to  have  the 
physical  support  of  his  arm  to  lean  on ;  it 
was  surprisingly  pleasant  to  have  the  moral 
support  of  his  presence.  She  had  had  to 
carry  all  the  responsibility  herself  for  so  long, 


HER  SON  223 

the  responsibility  of  decisions,  all  the  loneli- 
ness of  command ;  and  although  she  was 
quite  well  aware  of  her  own  efficiency  she  felt 
that  she  was  growing  a  little  tired,  and  would 
be  happy  to  let  some  of  the  responsibility 
slide  off  on  to  Henry's  shoulders.  When 
Lynes  was  obstinate,  as  he  sometimes  was, 
it  would  be  a  comfort  to  reply  that  he  must 
discuss  the  matter  with  Mr.  Henry.  At  the 
end  of  this  train  of  thought  she  said  confi- 
dently to  Henry,  "  You  won't  be  going  back 
to  the  Argentine  any  more,  dear,  will  you  ?  " 
•  Henry  emerged  startled  from  a  parallel 
train  of  thought  that  he  had  been  following. 
The  first  warm  excitement  of  his  homecoming 
had  passed,  and  he  was  beginning  to  wonder 
what  he  should  do,  when  once  his  mother  had 
had  her  fill  of  showing  him  all  which  she  had 
vaguely  threatened  to  show,  and  which  he 
did  not  particularly  want  to  see.  Already, 
with  reaction,  things  were  a  little  flat.  But 
he  answered,  without  any  perceptible  pause, 
"  No,  no  more  Argentine  for  me.  I'm  fed 
up  with  the  place."  He  was  ;  the  solitude, 
the  rough  life,  had  not  been  to  his  taste  ;  he 
had  grown  to  hate  the  plains,  and  the  stupid, 
ubiquitous  cattle,  and  the  endless  cattle-talk. 
No  more  Argentine  for  him  ;  he  had  had  the 


224  HER  SON 

experience,  he  had  made  the  money  he  wanted 
to  make,  now  he  wanted  the  pleasure  to 
which  he  thought  he  was  entitled. 

"  That's  nice,"  said  Mrs.  Martin  comfort- 
ably ;  "it  will  be  nice  for  me  to  have  you  at 
home  in  my  old  age." 

Henry  let  this  remark  pass ;  he  hated 
inflicting  disappointment,  and  there  would 
be  plenty  of  time  in  which  to  make  his  plans 
clear  to  his  mother.  In  the  meantime  she 
was  so  obviously  happy ;  a  pity  to  throw  a 
shadow  over  her  first  day. 

They  reached  the  top  of  the  path  and  the 
clump  of  firs.  Mrs.  Martin's  heart  was 
beating  hard,  and  a  little  pink  flush  had 
appeared  on  her  cheeks.  It  was  not,  after 
all,  every  day  that  one  reached  a  moment  one 
had  anticipated  for  nearly  five  years.  She 
wished  she  had  had  the  strength  of  mind  to 
wait  until  the  following  morning  before 
bringing  Henry  here,  for  the  country  was 
lovelier  under  the  morning  mists  than  now  in 
the  cruder  light  of  the  afternoon ;  but  she  had 
been  too  much  excited,  too  impatient.  They 
stood  there  looking  down  over  the  valley, 
across  it  to  the  Downs.  She  let  him  look  his 
fill. 

"  Better  than  the  Argentine,  Henry  ?  " 


HER  SON  225 

"  By  Jove,  yes,  I  should  think  so  :  better 
than  the  Argentine." 

She  gave  a  chuckle  of  happiness.  She 
dealt  her  secret  out  to  him  in  small  doses,  like 
the  old  Epicurean  she  was. 

"  Isn't  it  nice  to  think,  Henry,  that  those 
fields  and  woods  belong  to  you  ?  " 

"  But  they  don't,"  he  said,  "  they  belong 
to  you." 

"  Well — doesn't  that  amount  to  the  same 
thing  ?  " 

"  Oh,  no,"  he  said,  "  not  at  all  the  same 
thing,"  and  the  difference  in  his  mind  was 
that  whereas  she  loved  and  wanted  the  fields 
and  woods,  their  possession  would  have 
bored  him. 

"  Dear  Henry,  that  is  just  an  evasion.  You 
know  that  it  amounts  to  the  same  thing  really. 
Let  us,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  assume  that 
they  belong  to  us  both." 

"  All  right,"  he  said,  humouring  her. 

"  Do  you  remember,"  she  went  on,  "  we 
used  to  say,  how  nice  it  would  be  if  our  pro- 
perty went  down  as  far  as  the  river  ?  " 

"Did  we?— Doesn't  it  ?— No,  I  don't 
remember,"  he  said  absently. 

"  But,  Henry  !  Think,  darling!  Well,  it 
does  now  :  right  down  to  the  river." 


226  HER   SON 

"How  splendid!"  he  replied,  feeling  that 
hejwas  expected  to  say  something  of  the  sort. 
"  But  didn't  it  always  ?  " 


VII 

SHE  went  into  no  explanation ;  she  did  not 
remind  him  of  the  three  hundred  acres  re- 
quired to  round  off  the  estate,  nor  did  she 
make  the  confession  which  she  had  been 
saving  up,  like  a  guilty  child,  of  how  she  had 
got  round  the  obstinacy  of  Mr.  Thistle- 
thwaite.  She  made  some  quiet  reply  to  his 
last  remark,  and  went  on  talking  of  other 
things.  He  was  perfectly  oblivious  to  the 
moment  that  had  come  and  gone.  And  she, 
in  her  mind,  was  already  making  excuses  for 
him ;  he  had  been  away  for  so  long,  he  had 
grown  accustomed  to  such  vast  districts 
where  three  hundred  acres  must  seem  paltry 
indeed!  When  they  had  looked  sufficiently 
at  the  view,  she  returned  down  the  path 
beside  him,  her  hand  still  slipped  into  the 
crook  of  his  arm,  without  the  slightest  resent- 
ment. Henry  !  she  could  never  harbour 
resentment  against  Henry. 

But  a  little  of  the  eagerness  was  gone  ;  not 
much ;    only  the  first  edge  taken  off.     She 


HER  SON  227 

struggled  to  restore  it ;  she  had  an  uneasy 
feeling  of  disloyalty  towards  Henry.  And 
^really  he  had  been  so  very  charming  ;  noth- 
ing could  have  been  more  charming  or  more 
to  her  taste  than  his  manner  towards  her 
from  the  very  first  moment  when  he  had  bent 
to  kiss  her  in  the  porch,  fond  but  deferential, 
intimate  but  courteous.  Henry  was  the 
sort  of  man  who  would  always  be  courteous 
towards  women,  even  when  the  woman  hap- 
pened to  be  his  own  mother.  Mrs.  Martin 
greatly  appreciated  courtesy.  She  often  said 
that  it  was  becoming  rarer  and  more  rare. 
Certainly,  Henry's  manner  had  been  perfect 
in  every  respect,  and  she  was  seized  with 
remorse  that  she  could  have  directed  against 
him  so  much  as  the  criticism  of  a  passing 
disappointment.  She  must  not  admit  to 
herself  that  the  edge  of  her  eagerness  was 
blunted ;  and  she  began  forcing  herself 
to  talk  of  Lynes  and  the  farm,  and  presently, 
because  Henry  listened  with  so  much  atten- 
tion and  interest,  she  found  her  eagerness 
creeping  back.  They  went  round  to  the 
rickyard  together,  where  Lynes,  in  his 
breeches  and  leather  gaiters,  was  talking  to 
the  carter,  but  broke  off  to  come  towards 
Henry,  who  shook  hands  with  him  while  Mrs. 


228  HER  SON 

Martin  stood  by,  beaming  upon  their  meeting. 
She  was  enchanted  with  Henry ;  he  asked 
Lynes  questions  about  the  cattle,  and  followed 
him  into  the  door  of  the  shed  where  the  after- 
noon's milking  was  in  progress.  Mrs.  Martin 
waited  for  them  near  the  ricks,  because  she 
did  not  like  the  dirty  cobbles  of  the  farmyard ; 
she  was  perfectly  happy  again ;  this  was 
what  she  had  always  foreseen,  and  she  liked 
things  to  turn  out  exactly  according  to  the 
picture  she  had  been  in  the  habit  of  making 
in  advance  in  her  own  mind ;  she  was  only 
disconcerted  when  they  fell  out  differently. 
How  good  was  Henry's  manner  with  Lynes! 
she  watched  the  two  men  as  they  stood  in  the 
doorway  of  the  cowshed ;  Henry  had  said 
something  and  Lynes  was  laughing;  he 
pushed  back  his  cap  off  his  forehead  and 
scratched  his  head,  and  she  heard  him  say, 
"  That's  right,  sir,  that's  just  about  the 
size  of  it."  Her  heart  swelled  with  pride  in 
Henry.  He  was  getting  on  with  Lynes ; 
Lynes  approved  of  him,  that  was  obvious, 
and  Lynes'  approval  was  not  easily  won.  He 
was  a  scornful  man,  not  always  very  tract- 
able either,  and  very  contemptuous  of  most 
people's  knowledge  of  .agriculture  ;  but  here 
he  was  approving  of  Henry.  Her  own  esteem 


HER  SON  229 

of  Henry  rose  in  proportion  as  she  saw  Lynes' 
esteem.  She  felt  that  a  little  of  the  credit 
belonged  to  her  for  being  Henry's  mother. 

They  came  towards  her,  walking  slowly  and 
talking,  across  the  soft  ground  of  the  rick- 
yard,  where  the  cartwheels  had  cut  deep  ruts 
and  the  wisps  of  straw  were  sodden  into  the 
black  earth.  It  was  a  great  satisfaction  to 
her  to  see  Henry  and  Lynes  thus  together. 
She  was  the  impresario  exhibiting  them  to 
one  another.  The  afternoon  was  drawing 
very  gently  to  a  close.  A  little  cold,  perhaps, 
a  little  grey,  but  still  tender ;  a  dove-like 
grey,  hovering  over  the  trees,  over  the  ricks, 
and  over  the  barn  with  the  yellow  lichen  on 
the  roof.  A  tang  of  damp  farmyard  was, 
not  unpleasantly,  on  the  air. 

"  We'll  go  in  now,  shall  we,  Henry  ?  It's 
getting  chilly,"  said  Mrs.  Martin,  wrapping 
herself  more  closely  in  her  brown  cloak,  and 
nodding  and  smiling  to  Lynes. 

As  they  went  towards  the  house,  Henry 
said,  looking  down  at  her  in  that  confidential 
way  he  had,  "  Well,  that's  a  great  duty 
accomplished,  isn't  it  ?  ': 

"  Duty,  Henry  ?  " 

"  Yes.     Talking  to  Lynes,  I  mean." 

"  Oh  !  talking  to  Lynes.     To  be  sure 


230  HER   SON 

You  were  so  nice  to  him,  dear  boy ;  thank 
you." 

Duty — the  word  gave  her  a  small  chill. 
She  bent  over  the  fire  in  the  sitting-room, 
poking  it  into  a  blaze  ;  the  logs  fell  apart  and 
shot  up  into  flame. 

"  I  do  like  a  wood  fire,"  said  Mrs.  Martin. 
She  held  out  her  hands  towards  it ;  they 
were  cold.  She  had  not  known,  until  that 
moment,  how  cold  she  had  been. 

VIII 

THEY  were  at  dinner.  How  nice  Henry 
looked  in  his  evening  clothes ;  she  liked  his 
lean  brown  hands,  and  the  gesture  with  which 
he  smoothed  back  his  hair.  She  smiled 
fondly  as  she  thought  how  attractive  all 
women  must  find  Henry.  Life  on  a  ranch 
had  not  coarsened  him ;  far  from  it.  He 
was  sensitive  and  masculine  both,  an  ideal 
combination. 

"  Dear  Henry  ! "  she  murmured. 

He  leant  over  and  patted  her  hand,  but 
there  was  an  absent  look  in  his  eyes,  and  his 
manner  was  slightly  more  perfunctory  than 
it  had  been  at  luncheon.  Anyone  but  Mrs. 
Martin  would  have  suspected  that  he  could 


HER  SON  231 

assume  that  manner  at  will — had,  in  fact, 
assumed  it  often,  towards  many  women  who 
had  misinterpreted  it,  and  whom  he  had  for- 
gotten as  soon  as  they  were  out  of  sight.  They 
had  reproached  him  sometimes  ;  there  was  a 
fair  echo  of  reproaches  in  Henry's  life.  He 
had  always  felt  aggrieved  when  they  re- 
proached him ;  couldn't  they  understand 
that  he  was  kind-hearted  really  ?  that  he 
only  wanted  to  please  ?  To  make  life  agree- 
able ?  He  hated  saying  anything  disagree- 
able to  anybody,  but  greatly  preferred  enrol- 
ling them  among  the  victims  of  his  charm — 
which  he  could  turn  on,  at  a  moment's  notice, 
like  turning  on  a  tap — and  if  they  misunder- 
stood him,  he  did  not  consider  that  he  had 
been  to  blame.  Not  that  he  remained  to 
argue  the  matter  out.  It  was  far  easier,  in 
most  cases,  simply  to  go  right  away  instead, 
without  giving  any  explanation,  right  away 
to  where  the  clamour  that  was  sure  to  arise 
would  not  reach  his  ears  at  all.  And  some- 
times, when  he  had  not  managed  so  skilfully 
as  usual,  and  things  had  been,  briefly,  tire- 
some, he  would  criticize  himself  to  the  extent 
of  thinking  that  he  was  a  damned  fool  to 
have,  incorrigibly,  so  little  foresight  of  where 
the  easy  path  was  leading  him. 


232  HER  SON 

Yet  he  was  not  quite  right  about  this,  for 
he  was  perfectly  well  able  to  recognize  the 
progress  of  his  own  drifting ;  but  he  recog- 
nized it  as  though  it  applied  to  some  other 
person,  in  whose  affairs  he  was  himself  unable 
to  interfere.  He  watched  himself  as  he 
might  have  watched  another  man,  thinking 
meanwhile,  with  an  amused  contempt  and  a 
certain  compassion,  "  How  the  dickens  is 
he  going  to  get  himself  out  of  this  ?  " 

IX 

HE  could,  if  he  had  been  so  inclined,  have 
observed  the  process  at  work  after  dinner, 
when,  his  mother  seated  with  knitting  in  an 
arm-chair  on  the  one  side  of  the  fire,  and 
he  with  a  cigar  in  another  arm-chair  on  the 
other  side  of  the  fire,  his  legs  stretched  out 
straight  to  the  blaze,  they  talked  inter- 
mittently, a  conversation  in  which  the  future 
played  more  part  than  the  past.  Henry 
found  that  his  mother  had  definite  ideas 
about  the  future,  ideas  which  she  took  for 
granted  that  he  would  share.  He  knew 
that  he  ought  to  say  at  once  that  he  did  not 
share  them ;  but  that  would  entail  disap- 
pointing his  mother,  and  this  he  was  reluctant 


HER  SON  233 

to  do — at  any  rate  on  the  first  day.  Poor 
old  lady — let  her  be  happy.  What  was  the 
good  of  sending  her  to  bed  worried  ?  In  a 
day  or  two  he  would  give  her  a  hint.  He 
remembered  that  she  was  not  usually  slow 
at  taking  a  hint.  He  hoped  she  would  not 
make  a  fuss.  Really,  it  would  be  unreason- 
able if  she  made  a  fuss ;  she  could  not 
seriously  expect  him  to  spend  his  life  in 
talking  to  Lynes!  But  for  the  present, 
let  her  keep  her  illusions ;  she  seemed  so 
greatly  to  enjoy  telling  him  about  her 
farm,  and  he  needn't  listen ;  he  could  say 
"  Yes,"  and  "  Fancy,"  from  time  to  time, 
since  that  seemed  to  satisfy  her,  and,  mean- 
while, he  could  think  about  Isabel.  He  had 
promised  Isabel  that  he  would  not  be  away 
for  more  than  three  days  at  the  outside.  He 
hoped  he  would  not  find  it  too  difficult  to 
get  away  back  to  London  at  the  end  of  three 
days ;  there  would  be  a  fuss  if  he  went,  but 
on  the  other  hand  Isabel  would  make  a  far 
worse  fuss  if  he  stayed.  Isabel  was  not  as 
easy-going  as  he  could  have  wished,  though 
her  flares  of  temper,  when  they  were  not  so 
prolonged  as  to  become  inconvenient,  amused 
him  and  constituted  part  of  the  attraction 
she  had  for  him.  He  rendered  to  Isabel  the 


234  HER   SON 

homage  that  she  attracted  him  just  as  much 
now  as  five  years  ago,  before  he  left  for 
the  Argentine.  She  had  even  improved  in 
the  interval ;  improved  with  experience,  he 
told  himself  cynically,  not  resenting  the 
experience  in  the  least ;  she  had  improved  in 
appearance  too,  having  found  her  type  ;  and 
he  recalled  the  shock  of  delight  with  which  he 
had  seen  her  again  :  the  curious  pale  eyes, 
and  the  hard  line  of  the  clubbed  black  hair, 
cut  square  across  her  brows  ;  certainly  Isabel 
had  attraction,  and  was  as  wild  as  she  could 
be,  not  a  woman  one  could  neglect  with 
impunity,  if  one  didn't  want  her  to  be  off  and 
away.  .  .  .  No.  There  was  a  flick  and  a 
spirit  about  Isabel ;  that  was  what  he  liked. 
How  his  mother  would  disapprove  of  Isabel ! 
he  sent  out,  to  disguise  a  little  chuckle,  a 
long  stream  of  smoke,  and  the  thought  of  his 
mother's  disapproval  tickled  him  much.  His 
mother,  rambling  on  about  foot-and-mouth 
disease,  and  about  how  afraid  they  had  been, 
last  year,  that  it  would  come  across  into 
Gloucestershire,  while  Isabel,  probably,  was 
at  some  supper-party  sitting  on  a  table  and 
singing  to  her  guitar  those  Moorish  songs  in 
her  husky,  seductive  voice.  He  was  not 
irritated  with  his  mother  for  her  difference ; 


HER   SON  235 

at  another  moment  he  might  have  been 
irritated ;  but  at  present  he  was  too  comfort- 
able, too  warm,  too  full  of  a  good  dinner,  to 
find  her  unconsciousness  anything  but  divert- 
ing ;  and,  as  the  contrast  appeared  to  him 
more  and  more  as  a  good  joke,  he  encouraged 
her  with  sympathetic  comments  and  with 
the  compliment  of  his  grave  attention,  so  that 
she  put  behind  her  finally  and  entirely  the 
disappointment  she  had  had  over  the  three 
hundred  acres,  and  expounded  to  him  all  her 
dearest  schemes,  leaning  forward  tapping  him 
on  the  knee  with  her  long  knitting-needle  to 
enforce  her  points,  enlisting  his  sympathy  in 
all  her  difficulties  with  Lynes  and  Lynes5 
obstinacy,  exactly  as  she  had  planned  to  do, 
and  as,  up  to  the  present,  she  had  not  secured 
a  very  good  opportunity  of  doing.  This  was 
ideal :  to  sit  by  the  fireside  after  dinner  with 
Henry,  long,  slender,  nodding  gravely,  his 
eyes  on  the  fire  intent  with  concentration,  and 
to  pour  out  to  him  all  the  little  grievances 
of  years,  and  the  satisfactions  too,  for  she 
did  not  believe  in  dwelling  only  upon  what 
went  wrong,  but  also  upon  that  which  went 
right. 

"  And  so  you  see,  dear  boy,  I  have  really 
been  able  to  make  both  ends  meet ;  it  was  a 
9 


236  HER  SON 

little  difficult  at  times,  I  own,  but  now  I  am 
bound  to  say  the  farm  is  paying  very  nicely. 
Lynes  could  show  you  the  account-books, 
any  time  ;  I  think  perhaps  you  ought  to 
run  your  eye  over  them.  You  must  have 
picked  up  a  lot  of  useful  knowledge,  out 
there  ?  " 

"  Oh  yes,"  said  Henry,  broadly. 

"  Well,  it  will  all  come  in  very  useful  here, 
won't  it  ?  although  I  daresay  English  prac- 
tice is  different  in  many  ways.  I  could  see 
that  Lynes  very  quickly  discovered  that  you 
knew  what  you  were  talking  about.  It  will 
be  a  great  thing  for  me,  Henry,  a  very  great 
thing,  to  have  your  support  and  advice  in 
future." 

Henry  made  an  attempt ;  he  said,  "  But 
if  I  don't  happen  to  be  on  the  spot  ?  " 

"  Oh,  well,  you  won't  be  very  far  away," 
said  Mrs.  Martin  comfortably.  "  Even  if  you 
do  like  to  have  rooms  in  London  I  could 
always  get  you  at  a  moment's  notice." 

Henry  found  great  consolation  in  this 
remark  ;  it  offered  a  loophole,  and  he  readily 
placed  his  faith  in  loopholes.  He  was  also 
relieved,  because  he  considered,  his  mother 
having  said  that,  there  was  no  necessity  now 
for  him  to  say  anything.  Let  her  prattle 


HER  SON  237 

about  the  estate,  and  about  the  use  he  was 
going  to  be  to  her ;  there  would  always  be, 
now,  those  rooms  in  London  in  which  he  could 
take  refuge.  "  Why,  you  suggested  it  your- 
self," he  could  say,  raising  aggrieved  eye- 
brows, if  any  discussion  arose  in  the  future. 
It  was  true  that  her  next  observations  dimin- 
ished the  value  of  his  loophole,  but  he  chose  to 
ignore  that ;  what  was  said,  was  said.  Rooms 
in  London,  Christmas  with  his  mother,  and 
perhaps  a  week-end  in  the  summer,  and  a 
couple  of  days'  shooting  in  the  autumn ;  he 
wouldn't  mind  a  little  rough  shooting,  and 
had  already  ascertained  from  Lynes  that  there 
were  a  good  many  partridges  and  a  few 
pheasants ;  and  he  could  always  take  back 
some  birds  to  Isabel.  He  saw  himself,  on 
the  station  platform,  with  his  flat  gun-case 
and  cartridge  bag,  and  the  heavy  bundle  of 
limp  game,  rabbits,  partridges,  and  pheasants 
tied  together  by  the  legs.  He  would  go  out 
to-morrow,  and  see  what  he  could  pick  up 
for  Isabel.  His  mother  would  never  object  ; 
she  would  think  the  game  was  for  his  own 
use,  in  those  rooms  she,  thank  goodness,  so 
conveniently  visualized.  And  if  it  wasn't 
for  Isabel,  in  future  years,  well,  no  doubt  it 
would  be  for  somebody  else. 


238  HER  SON 

He  awoke  from  these  plans  to  what  his 
mother  was  saying. 

"  I  don't  think  it  would  be  good  for  you 
to  live  entirely  in  the  country.  So  I  shall 
drive  you  away,  Henry  dear,  whenever  you 
show  signs  of  becoming  a  vegetable.  I  shall 
be  able  to  carry  on  perfectly  well  without 
jjpu,  as  I  have  done  all  these  years.  You 
need  never  worry  about  that.  Besides,  you 
must  go  to  London  to  look  for  Mrs.  Henry." 

"  What  ?  "  said  Henry,  genuinely  startled. 

His  mother,  said,  smiling,  that  some  day 
he  would  have  to  marry.  She  would  like  to 
know  her  grandchildren  before  she  died. 
There  was  the  long  attic  at  the  top  of  the  house 
which  they  could  have  as  a  playroom. 

"  Sure  there  is  no  one?  "  she  questioned  him 
again,  more  urgently,  more  archly  this  time, 
and  he  denied  it  laughing,  to  reassure  her ; 
and  suddenly  the  laughter  which  he  had 
affected,  became  hearty,  for  he  had  thought 
of  Isabel,  Isabel  whom  he  would  never  dream 
of  marrying,  and  who  would  never  dream  of 
marrying  him;  Isabel,  insolent,  lackadaisical, 
exasperating,  with  the  end  of  a  cigarette — a 
fag,  she  called  it — smouldering  between  her 
lips;  Isabel  with  her  hands  stuck  in  the 
pockets  of  her  velveteen  jacket,  and  her  short 


HER   SON  239 

black  hair;  Isabel  holding  forth,  perched  on 
the  corner  of  a  table,  contradicting  him, 
getting  angry,  pushing  him  away  when  he 
tried  to  catch  hold  of  her  and  kiss  her — "  Oh, 
you  think  the  idea  of  marrying  funny  enough 
now,"  said  his  mother  sagely,  hearing  him 
laugh,  "  but  you  may  be  coming  to  me  with 
a  very  different  tale  in  a  few  months'  time." 

He  was  in  a  thoroughly  good  temper  by 
now ;  he  lounged  deeper  into  his  arm-chair 
and  stirred  the  logs  with  his  foot.  "  Good 
cigars  these,  mother,"  he  said,  critically 
examining  the  one  he  took  from  between  his 
teeth  ;  "  who  advises  you  about  cigars  ?  " 

"  Mr.  Thistlethwaite  recommended  those," 
Mrs.  Martin  replied  enchanted. 

"  Mr.  Thistlethwaite  ?  Who's  Mr.  Thistle- 
thwaite ?  "  asked  Henry. 

She  had  an  impulse  to  tell  him,  even  now, 
the  story  of  Mr.  Thistlethwaite  and  the  three 
hundred  acres  ;  to  ask  him  whether  he 
thought  she  had  acted  very  unscrupulously ; 
but  a  funny  inexplicable  pride  held  her  back. 
She  said  quietly  that  Mr.  Thistlethwaite  was 
the  local  M.P.  Henry,  to  her  relief,  betrayed 
no  further  interest.  He  continued  to  stir 
the  fire  absently  with  the  toe  of  his  shoe,  and 
his  mother,  watching  him,  looked  down  a 


240  HER   SON 

long  vista  of  such  evenings,  when  the  lamp- 
light would  fall  on  to  the  bowl  of  flowers  she 
placed  so  skilfully  to  receive  it,  and  on  the 
black  satin  head  of  Henry. 


SHE  opened  her  window  before  getting  into 
bed,  and  looked  out  upon  a  clear  night  and 
the  low-lying  mists  of  autumn.  It  was  very 
still ;  the  church  clock  chimed,  a  dog  barked 
in  the  distance,  and  the  breathless  silence 
spread  once  more  like  a  lake  round  the  ripple 
of  those  sounds.  She  looked  towards  that 
bit  of  England  which  was  sufficient  to  her, 
milky  and  invisible  ;  she  thought  of  the  ricks 
standing  in  the  silent  rickyard,  and  the 
sleeping  beasts  near  by  in  the  sheds  ;  she, 
who  had  been  brisk  and  practical  for  so  many 
years,  became  a  little  dreamy.  Then  bestir- 
ring herself,  she  crossed  the  room  to  bed. 
All  was  in  order  :  a  glass  of  milk  by  the  bed, 
a  box  of  matches,  a  clean  handkerchief,  her 
big  repeater  watch.  She  wound  it  carefully, 
and  put  it  away  under  the  many  pillows. 
She  sank  luxuriously  into  the  pillows — that 
little  pleasure  which  was  every  night  renewed. 
She  thought  to  herself  that  she  was  really 


HER  SON  241 

almost  too  happy ;  such  happiness  was  a 
pain  ;  there  was  no  means  of  expressing  it ; 
she  could  not  shout  and  sing,  so  it  had  to 
be  bottled  up,  and  the  compression  was  pain, 
exquisitely.  For  about  five  minutes,  during 
which  she  lived,  with  a  swimming  head, 
through  a  lifetime  of  sensations,  she  lay  awake ; 
then  amongst  her  pillows  she  fell  asleep. 

XI 

NEXT  morning  she  was  awakened  by  some 
sound  she  could  not  at  first  define,  but 
which  she  presently  identified  as  the  remote 
ringing  of  the  telephone  bell.  She  listened. 
The  servants  would  answer  it,  of  course,  but 
she  wondered  who  could  be  calling  the  house 
so  early  in  the  day.  Feeling  very  wide  awake 
she  slipped  into  her  dressing-gown  and  slippers 
and  went  to  the  top  of  the  stairs  to  listen. 
She  heard  Henry's  voice,  downstairs  in  the 
hall. 

"  Yes,  yes,  hullo.  Yes,  I'm  here.  Is  that 
you,  darling  ?  Sorry  to  ring  you  up  at  this 
hour,  but  later  on  every  word  I  said  would 
be  overheard.  Yes,  infernally  public."  He 
laughed  softly.  "  No,  I  don't  suppose  anyone 
ever  uses  this  telephone  for  purposes  they'd 


242  HER  SON 

rather  keep  to  themselves.  Oh,  all  right, 
thanks.  Pleased  to  see  me  ?  Yes,  I  think 
so.  Look  here,  things  are  going  to  be  deuced 
awkward.  Well,  she  expects  me  to  spend 
most  of  my  time  here — Yes,  an  awful  bore — 
Oh,  well,  it's  natural  enough,  I  suppose.  Five 
years,  and  all  that,  don't  you  know.  Well, 
but  what  am  I  to  say  ?  Can't  be  too  brutal, 
can  one  ? — Oh,  bored  stiff  in  two  days,  of 
course,  I  simply  don't  know  what  to  do  about 
it.  Besides,  I'm  dying  to  get  back  to  you. 
— Yes,  silly,  of  course. — I  wish  you'd  help, 
Isabel.  Tell  me  what  to  say  to  the  old  lady. 
— No,  she  seems  to  take  it  quite  for  granted. 
Oh,  all  the  year  round,  with  an  occasional 
week  in  London. — I  can't  say  I  think  it  in 
the  least  funny. — Well,  of  course,  if  I  was  a 
downright  brute.  .  .  ." 

Mrs.  Martin  turned  and  went  back  into  her 
bedroom.  She  shut  the  door  very  gently 
behind  her.  Presently  she  heard  Henry 
come  upstairs  and  go  into  his  room. 


THE  PARROT 

To  H.  G.  N. 


ONCE  upon  a  time  there  was  a  small  green 
parrot,  with  a  coral-coloured  head.  It  should 
have  lived  in  Uruguay,  but  actually  it  lived 
in  Pimlico,  in  a  cage,  a  piece  of  apple  stuck 
between  the  bars  at  one  end  of  its  perch,  and 
a  lump  of  sugar  between  the  bars  at  the  other. 
It  was  well-cared  for ;  its  drinking  water 
was  fresh  every  day,  the  seed  in  its  little 
trough  was  daily  renewed,  and  the  cage  stood 
on  a  table  in  the  window  to  get  the  yellow 
sunlight  that  occasionally  penetrated  the 
muslin  curtains.  The  room,  furthermore, 
was  well-warmed,  and  all  cats  and  such 
dangers  kept  rigorously  away.  In  spite  of 
all  this,  the  bird  was  extremely  disagreeable. 
If  anyone  went  to  stand  beside  its  cage,  in 
order  to  admire  its  beautiful  and  brilliant 
colouring,  it  took  refuge  in  a  corner,  buried  its 
head  beneath  the  seed-trough,  and  screamed 
on  a  harsh,  shrill  note  like  a  pig  in  the  sham- 
bles. Whenever  it  believed  itself  to  be  unob- 

345 


246  THE   PARROT 

served,  it  returned  to  the  eternal  and  unavail- 
ing occupation  of  trying  to  get  out  of  its  cage. 

In  early  days,  it  had  had  a  cage  of  less 
substantial  make  :  being  a  strong  little  bird 
it  had  contrived  to  loosen  a  bar  and  to  make 
its  escape  once  or  twice  into  the  room  ;  but, 
consequent  on  this,  a  more  adequate  cage 
had  been  procured,  the  bars  of  Vhich  merely 
twanged  like  harp-strings  under  the  assault 
of  the  beak,  and  yielded  not  at  all.  Never- 
theless the  parrot  was  not  discouraged.  It 
had  twenty-four  hours  out  of  every  day  at  its 
disposal,  and  three  hundred  and  sixty-five 
days  out  of  every  year.  It  worked  at  the 
bars  with  its  beak ;  it  stuck  its  feet  against 
the  sides,  and  tugged  at  the  bar.  Once  it 
discovered  how  to  open  the  door,  after  which 
the  door  had  to  be  secured  with  a  piece  of 
string.  The  owners  of  the  parrot  explained 
to  it,  that,  should  it  make  good  its  escape 
from  the  house,  it  would  surely  fall  a  prey 
to  a  cat,  a  dog,  or  a  passing  motor ;  and 
if  to  none  of  these  things,  then  to  the  climate 
of  England,  which  in  no  way  resembled  the 
climate  of  Uruguay.  When  they  stood  be- 
side its  cage  giving  those  explanations,  it  got 
down  into  the  corner,  cowered,  and  screamed. 

The  parrot  was  looked  after  by  the  under- 


THE   PARROT  247 

housemaid,  a  slatternly  girl  of  eighteen,  with 
smudges  of  coal  on  her  apron,  and  a  smear  of 
violet  eyes  in  a  white  sickly  face.  She  used 
to  talk  to  the  parrot  while  she  was  cleaning 
out  the  tray  at  the  bottom  of  the  cage,  con- 
fiding to  it  all  her  perplexities,  which  she 
could  safely  do  without  fear  of  being  over- 
heard, by  reason  of  the  din  the  parrot  main- 
tained meanwhile.  In  spite  of  its  lack  of 
response,  she  had  for  the  parrot  a  passion 
which  transformed  it  into  a  symbol.  Its 
jade-green  and  coral  seemed  to  give  her  a  hint 
of  something  marvellously  far  removed  from 
Pimlico.  Her  fifteen  minutes  with  the  parrot 
every  morning  remained  the  one  fabulous 
excursion  of  her  day ;  it  was  a  journey  to 
Bagdad,  a  peep  into  the  caves  of  Aladdin. 
"  Casting  down  their  golden  crowns  upon  a 
glassy  sea,"  she  murmured,  in  a  hotch-potch 
of  religion  and  romance — for  the  two  in  her 
mind  were  plaited  together  into  an  unex- 
plained but  beautiful  braid,  that  was  a  source 
of  confusion,  rapture,  and  a  strange  unhappi- 
ness. 

Apart  from  the  function  of  cleaning  out  the 
cage,  which  she  performed  with  efficiency,  she 
was,  considered  as  a  housemaid,  a  failure. 
Perpetually  in  trouble,  she  tried  to  mend  her 


248  THE   PARROT 

ways  ;  would  turn  energetic,  would  scrub  and 
polish ;  then,  as  she  relapsed  into  day-dreams, 
the  most  important  part  of  her  work  would 
be  left  forgotten.  Scolding  and  exasperation 
stormed  around  her  ears.  Sometimes  she 
appeared  disheartened  and  indifferent ;  some- 
times she  gazed  in  a  scared  fashion  at  the 
indignant  authority  and  set  about  her  work 
with  a  dazed  vehemence.  But  black-lead 
and  Brasso  remained  to  her,  in  spite  of  her 
efforts,  of  small  significance. 

Meanwhile  the  parrot  gave  up  the  attempt 
to  get  out  of  its  cage,  and  spent  its  days 
moping  upon  the  topmost  perch. 

II 

PEACE  reigned  in  the  house.  The  parrot  no 
longer  tore  at  its  bars  or  screamed,  and  as 
for  the  under-housemaid,  she  was  a  trans- 
formed creature  :  punctual,  orderly,  compe- 
tent, and  unobtrusive.  The  cook  said  she 
didn't  know  what  had  come  over  the  bird 
and  the  girl.  According  to  her  ideas,  the 
situation  was  now  most  satisfactory.  The 
two  rebels  had  at  last  fallen  into  line  with  the 
quiet  conduct  of  the  house,  and  there  was 
no  longer  anything  to  complain  of,  either  in 


THE  PARROT  249 

the  sitting-room  or  the  basement.  It  would 
have  been  hypercritical  to  complain  that 
the  girl's  quietness  was  disconcerting.  When 
her  tasks  were  done,  she  retired  to  her  bed- 
room, where  she  might  be  found  at  any 
moment  sitting  with  her  hands  lying  in  her 
lap,  the  violet  eyes  looking  out  of  the  window. 
Well,  if  she  chose  so  to  spend  her  time.  .  .  . 
The  parrot  sat  huddled  on  its  perch,  flaunting 
in  plumage  indeed,  for  that  was  beyond  its 
control,  but  irreproachable  in  demeanour.  It 
appeared  almost  to  apologize  by  its  humility 
for  the  garishness  of  colour  wherewith  Nature 
had  afflicted  it. 

One  morning  the  cook  came  down  as  was 
her  custom,  and  found  the  following  note 
addressed  to  her,  propped  up  on  the  kitchen 
dresser  : 

"  Dear  Mrs.  White,  i  have  gone  to  wear 
the  golden  crown  but  i  have  lit  the  stok- 
hole  and  laid  the  brekfast." 

Very  much  annoyed,  and  wondering  what 
tricks  the  girl  had  been  up  to,  she  climbed  the 
stairs  to  the  girl's  bedroom.  The  room  had 
been  tidied,  and  the  slops  emptied  away,  and 
the  girl  was  lying  dead  upon  the  bed. 

She  flew  downstairs  with  the  news.     In  the 


250  THE  PARROT 

sitting-room,  where  she  collided  with  her 
mistress,  she  noticed  the  parrot  on  its  back 
on  the  floor  of  the  cage,  its  two  little  legs 
sticking  stiffly  up  into  the  air. 


PRINTED   BY    GARDEN    CITY   PRESS,    LETCHWORTH,    ENGLAND. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

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RECEIVD 


MAR   3'G9  -9  AM 


LD  21A-40m-2,'69 
(J6057slO)476— A-32 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


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